Uniblue Registry Booster Review

Most computer users, with the exception of optimization junkies and advanced tweakers, never dare to tinker with their Windows Registry. As a matter of fact, most users are clueless when it comes to knowing what exactly the registry does, and amazingly, some are even unaware that the Windows Registry even exists. For the most part, computer users are never required to access or modify the Windows Registry manually, however whenever one changes their computer settings, updates their drivers, or alters an application, they are simultaneously making changes in the registry.

Throughout the week, I’ve been fortunate enough to review Uniblue’s Registry Booster, a dynamic registry scanning, defragmenting, and repairing utility. In the following article, I will detail the features and abilities of this program, test whether or not the Registry Booster improves system performance and stability, and express my personal thoughts toward Uniblue’s Registry Booster.

Update from David Risley on 12/7/07

This review was written in 2006 and we gave this program positive marks (as you will see as you read on). Since then, we have seen a lot of user comments with negative feedback regarding the “free scan” not properly uninstalling from the computer. We specifically asked the company about this issue in an interview with Uniblue. They said the problem has been fixed, and they gave an explanation why it was occurring. Also, we independently checked the free scan here at PCMech since the interview and we have had no issues removing it from our systems.

In my experience, those people who are claiming that Registry Booster is malware and will not uninstall are not that computer literate themselves. In our tests, it DOES remove easily and causes no harm to our test computers. There are differing opinions out there on how effective the software is, but I am confident (at this point) that there is nothing dangerous about their free scan. People need to realize that ANY program that affects the Windows registry has the possibility of messing something up. That is why it is SO important to back up your registry before running any scanning software, whether it be Registry Booster or something else.

With that, I will leave you to read the rest of Ryan’s review…

What is the Windows Registry?

Acting as a dynamic database that stores both settings and system information, the Windows Registry is an essential part of the Windows operating system. Information on hardware, software, and user preferences are stored in the Windows Registry, and the functionality and stability of one’s system relies heavily on the integrity of the registry. While much more could be said about the ins and outs of the registry, the one thing that I feel readers should know before continuing on with the article is that the Windows Registry isn’t perfect. Over time, unneeded registry entries accumulate and it is quite possible that registry errors will develop. Accumulating unneeded and invalid registry entries can hinder performance, and various registry errors can affect the stability of your applications.

Registry Booster Features

Uniblue’s Registry Booster comes packaged with a boat-load of features designed to not only identify and repair registry errors, but to also help enhance system performance and stability at the same time. Some of these features include:

The ability to scan for and repair:

Obsolete shared DLLs

Unused entries

Traces of uninstalled software

Repeat entries

Corrupt Active X/COM Objects

Undesired browser objects

Corrupt or missing application IDs

Unused Start Menu items

Orphaned, missing, and broken software paths and links

And more

A specially designed defragmenting utility, which helps compact and reduce the size of one’s registry by eliminating the fragmentation of one’s current Windows Registry.

A Windows Registry back-up utility and automatic back-up prompts

A Windows Registry restore function that allows users to restore their registry to a previously created backup point

Automatic Scan-On-Start abilities

Uniblue’s Registry Booster System Requirements

Unlike much of today’s software, Uniblue’s Registry Booster installs and functions properly on older computer systems very well. The recommended minimum system requirements are as follows:

Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 500MHz processor

128MB of RAM

CD-ROM Drive

10MB free hard drive space

Windows Operating System of 98 / ME / NT / 2000 / or XP

Installation

Thanks to a wonderfully designed installer, the installation of Uniblue’s Registry Booster was fairly simple and effortless. So simple, in fact, that even the most novice computer user would find Uniblue’s Registry Booster easy to install compared to most other software. Additionally, as the Registry Booster is less than 10MB is size, the installation was extremely fast. Users are permitted to choose where they would like to install the Registry Booster, and whether or not they would like to have desktop and quick launch icons created.

First Impressions

Overall, I was quite impressed with the sleek and intuitive design of Uniblue’s Registry Booster. Using a unique tab-like system, everything was well laid out and easy to find. Having never used this product before, I am happy to say that I was neither confused nor perplexed by the arrangement of features within the Registry Booster’s colorful user interface. As the novelty of the Registry Booster’s interface began to set in, I decided it was time to see how effective Uniblue’s software really was.

Scanning: Uniblue’s Registry Booster comes packaged with a highly sophisticated scanning engine that peruses one’s registry in both a thorough and quick manner. I was surprised at how quickly the utility scanned my entire registry, and shocked to see that it had reported a total of 165 registry errors. While most of the errors were linked to missing paths and unneeded entries caused from adding and removing applications, I was completely unaware that my registry contained a total of 165 errors.

Backing Up: Like most performance enhancing programs these days, Uniblue’s Registry Booster comes with a registry back-up utility, just in case something goes awry. Before allowing the Registry Booster to make any changes to the registry, the software will prompt the user to back-up before proceeding. I found the back-up utility to be a little on the slow side, however I’d rather wait a few seconds longer and allow the program to create a fully restorable image of my Windows Registry. Don’t be excessively bold by not making a backup–you might regret it one day.

Repairing: Uniblue’s Registry Booster repairs the errors it finds, and does so in a timely manner. Furthermore, when an error is repaired, it is repaired for good and doesn’t reappear on subsequent registry scans.

Defragmenting: Until this review, I was completely unaware that my registry could even become “fragmented”. However, when I sat down to think about it, it actually made a lot of sense; hard drives become fragmented even after relatively moderate usage, and since we constantly are making changes to the registry, it can develop fragments over time as well. The defragmenting process was also very quick, and according to Uniblue, defragging one’s registry will improve boot times (read on for more). After running the defragmenting utility, the Registry Booster will prompt you to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

Does Uniblue’s Registry Booster Work?

Determined to evaluate the effectiveness of Uniblue’s Registry Booster, I decided to benchmark my test computer both before and after running the Registry Booster’s scanning and defragging utilities.

At this point, I would like to point out that I am only testing the effectiveness of the Registry Booster from within Windows XP. Therefore, I can only assume that similar changes in system performance will occur within other operating systems.

Before testing my machine, I rigorously installed and uninstalled various freeware applications. In doing so, I hoped to create a relatively “messy” registry with various errors, fragments, and missing / unneeded entries. Likewise, after running Uniblue’s Registry Booster it detected a plethora of errors related to the many applications I added and then removed from my system. Most of the errors found were of the missing, orphaned, and unneeded variety. The results of the following tests demonstrate how repairing registry errors (that are associated with adding and removing programs) can affect system performance.

The Tests

I have developed three unique tests to observe how Uniblue’s Registry Booster affects the performance of Windows XP.Boot and Start-Up times: How long it takes from pushing the power button to when the Windows XP Desktop loadsRestart Times: How long it takes to restart Windows XPAdd/Remove Program List: How long it takes to load the Windows Add / Remove Program list

Before

Start Up

Restart

Add/Remove Program List

Trial One

46 Seconds

63 Seconds

10 Seconds

Trial Two

45 Seconds

61 Seconds

11 Seconds

After

Start Up

Restart

Add/Remove Program List

Trial One

43 Seconds

58 Seconds

10 Seconds

Trial Two

44 Seconds

57 Seconds

9 Seconds

As you can see, both start up and restart times were reduced significantly after using the Registry Booster’s scanning, repairing, and defragmenting utilities. However, there was only a one second average increase in loading the Add / Remove program list. From my tests, I feel confident in the performance enhancing capabilities of Uniblue’s Registry Booster. Being an avid computer enthusiast, even the tiniest improvements in system performance make me ecstatic.

Final Impressions and Conclusion

Overall, I was very impressed with Uniblue’s Registry Booster. The software’s appearance, design, and performance enhancing capabilities exceeded my expectations. The scanning, repairing, and defragmenting utilities did exactly what they were supposed to and there was a definite boost in system performance. For a mere $30 download of their software, or $40 if you wish to buy the disk and packaging, I recommend Uniblue’s Registry Booster to all computer users. From what I’ve seen of the software so far, I can imagine that the Registry Booster will help stabilize and improve system performance on even the most erratically-behaving machines.

I give Uniblue’s Registry Booster a 9.5/10.

Update Feb. 8, 2010

Comments for this article have now been closed. This was done because people were using as a means of getting Uniblue support. This article is not an official Uniblue support channel. If you would like to contact Uniblue for support, they can be reached at uniblue.com/support, thank you.

Comments

I got tricked by this company to install a demonstration of this product. Now I cannot get it off my computer. Control panel install says it cannot be uninstalled because registery cleaner seems to be running. I did a search for it, found the parts, dumped them into my recycle bin, emptied it and restarted my computer. When the restart was complete, the damn thing started right away. How do I get this off my computer. I am pissed.
John

Hi John,
Hilary here, from Uniblue – the makers of RegistryBooster.
As a Microsoft Gold Certified partner, we don’t trick anyone into installing the trial version (free scan); at some point you will have downloaded the trial version onto your PC.
We are aware that some users who utilized trial versions (free scans) had difficulty in uninstalling the software. This wasn’t intentional, and this was caused by the fact that the software was running in the System Tray when the user tried to delete the program. This wasn’t clear to many users, and, once alerted, we acted on it immediately. In response, we have developed a new feature which closes the program automatically when the user starts to uninstall. These free scans are diagnostic; RegistryBooster alerts the user to any potential problems in the registry, and SpeedUpMyPC tells the user if their PC performance can be improved. Clients can then install the full versions to actually fix any identified issues.

1. Just ran free scan & it was not clear that it was loading a trial version versus simply “A Free Scan & Free 15 Item cleanup” (which can all be done without permanently loading the program into the hard drive & into the start-up items list)that would then quietly disappear.

2. Before I knew the above (which I learned on restart), I decided to purchase full PowerSuite & downloaded both the suite & tweaker.

3. Restarted computer & was surprised to see RegBooster2 running automatically on start-up.

4. Closed it & went to control panel to uninstall. Pop-up stated that it was still running clicked OK or whatever but still would not uninstall. So your auto program shutdown feature did not work.

5. Used task manager to shut down the program and then back to control panel to uninstall & seemed to work.

6. Double clicked the downloaded PowerSuite file and it insists that I enter my “Licence Number”.

7. O.K. – went to all my paperwork (printouts of both the online confirmation and the emailed confirmation) & don’t you know it “No Licence Number is Listed”!!

8. O.K. – why not try the Serial # – Nope, no luck.

9. O.K. – why not try the Order Confirmation # – Nope, no luck with that either!!!

Note: If you ask for Licence # and then only show a serial number on your confirmation, you are already causing an upset.

Now, I first figured out that the Serial # was likely the Licence number. However, at first, when it did not work, rather than recheck the number more closely, I figured that I was wrong and that the Serial # was not the Licence # and so I tried the Order Confirmation # and that was not it either.

It was only later, when I checked your FAQ, that I found that my first assumption was correct. Then, knowing this, I rechecked the number carefully and, in the very small type on gmail, I noticed that I entered two (2) B’s together when one was actually an 8 (very small type on Gmail!)

However, I could also have wasted almost no time if you’re instructions were clear.

Congratulations Uniblue. The new improved 2009 version fixed that uninstall bug.
Now there is no Redistry Booster link in the Control Panel add remove programs list. The only way to uninstall is to

1. Start RB and uncheck both default settings from the Settings tab

2. Reboot and then Delete C:\Program Files\uniblue

Thanks to this simple little problem, NOTHING that uniblue makes will ever be considered or even evaluated again. Why? Because people who are in the business of registry fixing don’t omit an uninstall routine accidentally.

You acted in bad faith and now your name is mud. Is there anything you can do to repair this? Not really but there is one saving grace:

The untold millions of computer users who will install or even purchase your stuff before asking anyone who has ever used it. As such you will continue in business. You just won’t ever grow to a major player without a serious integrity overhaul.

It is a trick (i.e. a sales tactic) because our naive friend
Frank wasn’t told that the ” Free Scan ” was a trial version
and that installing it would set it to auto start on system
boot.Which it doesn’t have to do in order for your ” FREE
SCAN ” to do it’s job.

On a separate note just to clarify Uniblue’s position – we do not ‘trick’ our users in any way. We offer an evaluation version of our software as a ‘free scan’ – and this is exactly what the evaluation version is. It allows users to scan their PC to diagnose it for registry problems without the need to purchase. In this way if you dont need the product you dont purchase it.

Added to this any purchase made with Uniblue is covered by a 30 day money back guarantee. So basically you can return any product within 30 days – no questions asked. Its evident we do our utmost to keep our clients satisfied.

Surely you are aware that people are going to be upset when they eventually realize that your registry repair program is NOT FREE as inferred. Yes, the scan is free and that is all that you claim in your advertising but the scan alone is useless without the clean up afterwards. Unless you make that VERY clear, people are going to waste a lot of time downloading and installing and scanning only to find that NOW there’s a catch. Even though you don’t make “false” claims, people are going to be pissed and are more likely to look for something else rather than to go the extra mile and buy your cleaner once they feel they’ve been “tricked”.

You could sell a million copies at $10 or a hundred at $50. But most people won’t give you 50 cents if you try to deceive them.

I couldn’t agree more with Dave’s assesment, Uniblue’s website is totally deceptive, there is no mention anywhere about the process you are about to get yourself into. If you read CAREFULLY, very CAREFULLY and between the lines, analyze the English language for a couple of years then yes maybe then your’re able to come to the conclusion that maybe this is not as it appears to be, the key sentence on there site is “free registry cleaner download”. As a test I downloaded their so called “free registry cleaner” onto a test system and as claimed did not have any problem uninstalling. But for reasons of prinicpal I would never purchase any product from a company which practices deceptive advertising, Microsoft gold certified or not, like Microsoft is an upstanding and forthright oganization. The old saying “you never get something for nothing” should be on everyones mind, especially on the internet.

All of the registry cleaners suck in buyers by placing adds that attract users trying to find answers to real problems. You will readily say that my problem was well beyond the scope of a registry cleaner, but you do not present such limitations on your website.

I would never by another product from your company after my experience with Registry Booster.

Although you don’t officially trick anyone I had a similar situation. The product is advertised as free, it is only when the consumer installs the product and runs the scan that they discover that they need to buy the product for it to be any use. This is a common ‘trick’ by most registry cleaner software manufacturers.

Why not have the potential customer install the program which fully scans and cleans their registry, but only the once? – After which it’ll not clean again until they buy the full version

Why not make the trial version set a registry flag or two that allows as many scans as the customer likes but only allows a single clean? After the single clean it could display a notice saying something like:

“Uniblue Registry Booster has scanned and repaired your registry. You’ll probably notice the difference straight away. – But Uniblue registry Booster is in trial-mode, so it won’t do any more repairs until you buy the full version.

Now that you’ve seen just how effecftive Uniblue Registry Booster is, and how it makes your computer function so much better, we urge you to buy a licence so that you can keep your registry in tip-top condition by cleaning it regularly.”

Surely that makes a lot more sense and demonstrates the product far better too?

Hilary, look this is why I do not like Uniblue. I downloaded the DriverScanner 2009 and printed out my invoice, there are two numbers on there a reference number and a invoice number. Nothing on this receipt says serial number. So guess what happend when I tried to register the product…nada, zip, nothing. So I went back to your website to the so called tech support, sent two emails one simpling stating that I needed the serial number. And, another demanding the serial number…never recieved one reply. Your customer support site is a joke! My third email too Uniblue stated that I wanted my money back, not that I believe i will ever get it….So just to re-cap what did I get for wasting my 30 dollors…. nothing. DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY…THEY ARE RIP OFFS!!! There is no phone number to call them with problems, after a week of trying to reach this company…I did call Microsoft and blast them for getting in bed with you guys! So for 30 dollors I have paid for the right to COMPLAIN that UNIBLUE SUCKS to high heaven. Trust me, don’t waste your money!

why would you pay for and of the uniblue programs lol all the powersuite keys are on youtube like crazy sumpc, driver , registry , spyremove etc they re on there and you didnt have to spend the 30 bucks

“Instant scan” implies on-line, rather than as non-instant as possible, which is to require download, install, and execution.
‘Free Trial System and Registry Scan Only’ would also say what you mean, and avoid the justifiable impression of trickery that
” * Boost PC performance
* Increase system stability
* Avoid .exe errors”
clearly indicates.
Words are your professional tools. It is reasonable to expect you use them carefully to reflect your intent.

After reading many of the replies, I stand a little confused. I have not purchased the product but I did download the free scan. When I downloaded it, I knew for a certainty that this was only going to be a SCAN and not a repair. I do not consider myself computer savvy but I do have common sense. Most marketing “techniques” are designed to grab your attention and almost always have “something more” to deal with after the initial grab. This one was no different. People are complaining because they are looking for something that is not there and WANT to believe it is, FREE COMPLETE SERVICE. Sorry folks.

Peter, you are just another in a long line of people blaming a perfectly good product for your own lack of knowledge. Inexperience is not a crime, but you really do need to be wary of going off half-cocked with incorrect or insufficient information.

With regard to a product’s appearance in “Add or Remove Programs”, you can start your education with my article: “Understanding & Troubleshooting the ‘Add or Remove Programs’ Applet”.

Click to my blog (see signature below) and scroll down to the above title.

And as I said in another post…

“…after installation *ON A HEALTHY PC*, there is most definitely an option to uninstall ‘Uniblue RegistryBooster 2009′ in the ‘Add or Remove Programs’ dialog. You will find the reason for this adequately explained in the above-mentioned article. However, on a PC that is in some way compromised or in a state other than ‘healthy’, anything can happen.”

Regarding your comment about “uniblue pop up thing”, I assume you mean it is loading at Windows start-up. Controlling what does and doesn’t load at boot time is something that is in the hands of every Windows user and, in the interests of every-day competence, every Windows user should know how to manage the auto-starting of programs. Once again, it’s completely in your hands.

It’s kind of interesting how this is a recurring problem, and everyone who shows up and reports it are told that they’re newbies and the problem lies with THEM, not the product that randomly showed up and now cannot be removed. There is no possibility of product error, no possibility of a rogue affiliate, no, the end-user is the problem here.

For some reason, I doubt that every single person who’s gonna come in here with this problem is a newbie who brought it on themselves. We have no knowledge of their systems, the degree of maintenance on them, and yet, somehow we know enough to basically tell them to fuck off by spewing long condescending diatribes at them about how they’re inexperienced. Yeah, that’ll win hearts and minds. Let’s assume all these users just clicked on the flashing “ZOMG TOTALLY FREE SCAN!!!111″ button. If they go for inexperienced PC-users with sleazy advertising like that, that’s what they’re gonna get; an inexperienced user-base. Hence it’s not the user’s fault. Well, perhaps the users are at fault for not recognizing the bait and switch tactic, but…

Anyway, contact Uniblue about it. I lost the link, but get them to send you a link to the latest version, that’s how I gained an uninstall entry for it.

> For some reason, I doubt that every single person who’s
> gonna come in here with this problem is a newbie who
> brought it on themselves.

Why would it be so unbelievable? Incompetent computer users outnumber even the marginally competent by millions to one, as anyone in IT that deals with end users on a daily basis knows only too well to their constant frustration.

Even most people who use computers all day at work haven’t got a clue what most of the buttons, links and menu items are for on the applications they use every day. Mention Windows Explorer and their faces go blank. Tell someone to open Control Panel and there’s dead silence on the other end of the phone. Most have no idea of the proper and safe way to install software, ultimately the original cause of many of the complaints on this page. As any help desk employee will verify most people have to be stepped through the simplest operations with baby talk. And even then they have to be checked and double-checked every step of the way because they’ll hear what they want to hear instead of what is actually being said.

After many years in IT support I have no doubt that the heart of the problem is Windows itself. It’s simply too complex for the casual user. That’s why support techs in business environments take a fairly strict line in locking down the OS and many applications, so the individual users can’t mess with them. But the home user doesn’t have that sort of support or protection, so if you’re going to use a Windows computer on an ongoing basis its your own responsibility to learn the ropes.

But as has been mentioned here several times, exploding and blaming the tools because things aren’t going right for you will often just serve to illustrate your own ignorance. It’s really quite amusing to read through these messages and see the number of people who just explode straight off instead of first clearly stating their problem and asking for assistance.

And why is it that so many of the more strident complainers only seem to come here to let off steam when it’s clear they haven’t even tried the product’s support service first? I find that really suspicious. Is it because a conversation with support would be private, whereas here they can vent to an audience? Very suspicious.

> Yeah, that’ll win hearts and minds.

Why would you think that anyone here should care about your comfort zone? Vendors like Uniblue do of course, but as far as the rest of us are concerned you can either accept advice or take a running jump. Who cares?

> Let’s assume all these users just clicked on the
> flashing “ZOMG TOTALLY FREE SCAN!!!111 button. If they
> go for inexperienced PC-users with sleazy advertising
> like that, that’s what they’re gonna get; an
> inexperienced user-base. Hence it’s not the user’s
> fault. Well, perhaps the users are at fault for not
> recognizing the bait and switch tactic, but…

Wake up dude. That tired old objection has been asked and answered many times. What’s your native language? Scan and Fix might mean the same thing in your language but in English they are different words with different meanings. Only an illiterate would-be squawking about not getting a free Fix when they were promised a free Scan. Consult a Dictionary and stop talking nonsense.

Sorry about the “long diatribe”. Personally I found the longer messages more interesting and more informative than all the one sentence blabs that provide nothing of use. I see you’ve posted several times about your own problems. As far as I can see each of your complaints has received a sensible reply, which apparently you just don’t want to accept. I’m afraid there’s nothing anyone can do to help people who just won’t listen.

> After many years in IT support I have no doubt that the
> heart of the problem is Windows itself. It’s simply too
> complex for the casual user. That’s why support techs in
> business environments take a fairly strict line in locking
> down the OS and many applications, so the individual users
> can’t mess with them. But the home user doesn’t have that
> sort of support or protection, so if you’re going to use a
> Windows computer on an ongoing basis its your own
> responsibility to learn the ropes.

Jason, I’m 100% in agreement.

Windows is too complex for the average unsupported user who hasn’t had a proper education in the use and maintenance of the operating system. And very few people have had a “proper education” or take it upon themselves to develop an acceptable level of competence.

But it’s what we’re stuck with, so the ultimate responsibility will always devolve back to the user — though too often the user doesn’t want to accept the responsibility.

They just want everything to work right first time, which would be nice, but it ain’t going to happen for at least several generations of Windows yet to come.

The really laughable thing is the number of people who desperately need help but who just flatly reject any explanation that doesn’t dovetail with their own erroneous preconceptions.

First, I think you are right that there is alot of whining here. But, saying that every user should know about the internal workings of Windows is nonsense. Should every person who drives a car know how to rebuild the engine? Or even change the spare tire? It might be nice, but do they? Definetly not! The computer is a tool and lots of users aren’t interested in how it works, they just want it to work. The objective is to have things work fast and first time. Anything less leaves room for improvement.

A good installation proccess, written by people who DO know what they are doing, should ask if the user wants the program to run at start-up, unless it is absolutely required. Checkboxes like those Uniblue uses for the startup shortcuts would work. Recommendations, warnings, or at least information about the startup choice should also be provided.

Knowing that some, if not many, of the users who test the trial version will not buy the full license, Uniblue’s uninstallation process should be at least as simple as the installation.

> … saying that every user should know about the
> internal workings of Windows is nonsense.

It should be obvious to any reasonably literate reader that neither Jason-P nor I put forth the position that familiarity with “the internal workings of Windows” was necessary. That’s an interpretation of your own invention.

Jason-P said: “its your own responsibility to learn the ropes”.
I said: “And very few people … develop an acceptable level of competence.

Translating “learn the ropes” and “acceptable level of competence” to equate to knowing about the “internal workings of Windows” is a duplicitous stretch, don’t you think?

> Should every person who drives a car know how to
> rebuild the engine?

An inappropriate comparison. Here’s a more sensible one:

Take an indigenous warrior out of the New Guinea highlands and seat him behind the wheel of a car. Eventually he’ll fiddle with the right thing to get it started, then stand back and watch the mayhem that ensues.

In other words, some minimum level of competency is required to operate any “tool”.

> The computer is a tool and lots of users aren’t
> interested in how it works, they just want it to work.
> The objective is to have things work fast and first
> time. Anything less leaves room for improvement.

Again, Jason-P and I both acknowledged that that would be nice, but that’s just not the way things are.

Let’s consider “just-using-Windows-without-any-knowledge-or-modifications” in a different context.

If you take your new Windows computer home, hook it up to broadband connection, and just proceed to use it as is, I can give you this absolute, ironclad guarantee:

Within a very short time, possibly within minutes, your computer will come under repeated, automated attack. And because you’re using native, unmodified Windows your PC absolutely WILL be compromised fairly quickly.

And guess what? You will probably never know what’s happened. The cyber-crims of yesteryear were mostly just mindless thugs whose aim was to mess things up and cause you grief. Today’s breed is much smarter and they have different goals. The longer they can inhabit your system without you knowing it the better off they are, so a stealthy invasion is usually the aim. And that sort of direct attack doesn’t even take into account the other attack vectors you will open up by just using the computer — downloading files, retrieving e-mail and even just visiting Web sites.

Now, should it be like this? Should you have to take significant positive action just to safeguard a brand new computer system and make it usable without risk?

Of course not!

But facts are facts, and the scenario stated above is an indisputable fact. That’s just the way things are, and there’s nothing you I can do about it other than to stop using Windows. So you either get pro-active and take responsibility for your own welfare, or you suffer the inevitable fate.

Or, in the context of everyday use, you acquire some reasonable competence or you stumble around blindly making one mistake after another.

– If it’s possible for a user to download and install third-party programs, then the users should know the correct and safe way to download, scan, prepare for installation and install. Millions don’t.

– If it’s possible for a user to uninstall existing programs, then the user should know the preparatory steps to take and the uninstall options available. Millions don’t.

– If it’s possible to save files to storage media, then the user should know how to explore that media and how to create a sensible storage hierarchy. Millions don’t.

I could go on and on listing very basic operations that every computer user should be able to perform, but that MILLIONS CAN’T!

In other words, they don’t have the basic knowledge required to safely operate their “tool”.

> Uniblue’s uninstallation process should be at least
> as simple as the installation.

Asked and answered many times. Apparently in the early days of RegistryBooster there were problems with the uninstall process. Those problems were acknowledged and rectified by Uniblue. Now the uninstall process works just fine, and no different to a zillion other applications out there.

Thanks for the heads up response John.
I didn’t go through reading the entire review, but bottom line if you aren’t ready to purchase the software…

You are permitted 15 registry fixes for free. Over 1000 fixes were listed when it ran a scan. The settings on the control panel have it autostarting with Windows and running a scan when the system is started. So I turned those options off before removing the software.

Then I opened up Task Manager, went to the Programs running tab and aborted a rogue program that was named with an underscore as 1st character and a suffix of .tmp. There was also a rundll – so I aborted that also.

Went to the control panel and removed software – which states that Uniblue was removed successfully.

Perhaps I’m old-school in getting rid of stuff, but that’s from observing how software installed itself on Windows 3.1.

A smart move before running any registry software is to go to Start, Run…, type in REGEDIT then export the entire registry to a file. If you need to revert you can do that with a safe-mode restart and running regedit to import the clean copy of your registry.

Another good way to take a registry backup is to create a System Restore point… And/or you might like to install and run Erunt, which backs up your registry to a file accessible from the repair console at boot every time you start your computer.

Can you please explain this more detail for us novices. I cannot get this off my computer and it doesn’t show in add remove programs. Where in the control panel do I find to stop it from auto starting? Thanks so much!

As mentioned above, we were aware of an issue with earlier versions of RegistryBooster, prior to the release of version 2.0.1107.3564. The issue was if you tried uninstalling without first closing the program, the uninstall could have failed half way because some RegistryBooster files were in use by the system and could not be deleted. When this occurred, parts of RegistryBooster remained on the computer; however RegistryBooster would not be seen in the Add or Remove Programs list.

If this is the case, in order to completely remove RegistryBooster, you need to temporarily install the latest version in order for it to appear in the Add or remove programs list again. You can install the latest version from here: http://download.uniblue.com/ub/main/rb/registrybooster.exe

You will then see it in the Add or Remove programs list, and you can remove it quickly and easily

First of all I would like to say that I am no computer guru. I also was having trouble with the free Uniblue trial version scan taking over my computer. I didn’t like the fact that it would pop up every time that I started my computer so, I removed the program from the add or remove program list and it still didn’t solve the problem. After reading the comments that others had posted I realized that I didn’t exit the program first out of the system tray that is the icon by the clock. So I followed your instructions (Hilary) to download the link that you provided. The steps I took was I first exited the program from the system tray then I went to the add or remove list and I no longer have the program popping up. However, I would like to know how do I remove it from my registry as it is still in the registry. Also for all of you out there you can use the Microsoft safety scanner to clean your registry their website is http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-ca/default.htmand it works fine but you must be diligent on making sure you do this monthly as you need to do this manually; that is visit the website once a month. I hope this helps you all out there and Hilary could you please provide me with the information as to how to remove registry booster from the registry. I will check this site for your comments or you can email me.

hi, i just downloaded yesterday and i really like it. my laptop is fast again. John & Stephen, you seem a lot more computer savvy than myself, why do you dislike the program? i will say that I am having difficulty customizing the settings.

please tell me why you wantedd to remove – so i havea something to consider.

I got it off my computer. I downlaoded a program called a-squared hijackfree. I read another message board where some people had used this program to remove uniblue. I turned it off from running on my computer first and that enabled me to remove it!

To Ruth.
I really didn’t need this program because I have Windows Vista. It is fantastic and takes care of all my needs. It is so awesome I am upgrading from Home Basic to Premium. I just resented the fact that Uniblue forced this on me. It was trickery and I just couldn’t get it off my computer.One of the early posters showed me how to get into the registry to delete it. This really makes me mad that they make it so hard to get off the computer by messing with my registry.
John

I hope that you have read my original response to you, and my response to Ruth, and that I’ve managed to tackle your concerns. It wasn’t our intention that RegistryBooster was difficult to uninstall, and I hope that you have successfully removed it. If you are still having problems, please contact our Support team, who will gladly assist you.
This is the link to our Support Department, where you can send any queries you may have: http://www.liutilities.com/support/ticket/

In the words of another John; John McEnroe “You cannot be serious!” Vista takes care of all your needs? Uh? You need slower performance for more resource drain?! You need not to be able to run all the hardware and software you could run with XP? I’m not being funny but you must have few needs.

I really pisses me off when for no apparent reason a program such as this gets intalled by trickey on my computer. I haven’t been able to remove it either. it starts to run whenever I turn my computer on and the add remove programs keeps telling me that this program is running, perhaps stealing my information? and ahh shucks, there is an add running at the bottome of this post which I’m sure will do some other “crap” to my computer. I’d like to see their emplyees get a bunch of unwanted, undeleable advertisments when they sit down to work.

Uniblue offers a free trial version of Registry Booster in order to give customers the option to test the effectiveness of Registry Booster’s registry scan engine. We promote these free trial versions as “Free Scans”, however its up to the end user to decide whether he or she wants to take the Free Scan – by clicking on the button and downloading the product – or not. We don’t install ANYTHING without the user intentionally initiating the download process.

That is true Hillary. However, how can the potential customers check the effectiveness (ei speeding up the computer) if only fifteen errors are fixed? That really shows us nothing about the effectiveness of the product. I just “fixed” 15 errors but how do I know it will help my computer when I still have 329 errors left? That is completely illogical. Now I hope that I can get it off my computer after what I just read. I liked an earlier idea about letting the scan fix everything once and not doing it again until the customer purchases the product. That way we could actually see if it works.
Thanks,
Rose

Thanks John for the nod on the product. i hate feeling uneasy about an install. i do need something i can push a button and have it clean up my PC though. I just don’t want to be hijacked by it. i did a system restore and haven’t seen a trace of it. it seemd to have been backed by Microsoft and liked by well respected PC trade.

i will reinstrall if the company get help me control it and not teh otherf way around!

Maureen:
This is the best program I ever found, It’s called Vcom Fix-It Utilities. I got it a couple of years ago at Best Buy. Here is the Web site. Hope this opens for you, if not just search for the product name.

I agree with the top guys I am so mad I would love to sue these guys. This has messed up my computor so bad. I cannot even get into my email. I cannot get it off of my computor. Stuff is dinging and pinging. It is destroying my files. It keeps them on I cannot add a new folder and delets them at will. It has put old stuff on my computor that was there years ago. I paid for this but it will not activate it just keeps asking me to pay again. Support help what crap is that you email them and they give you a ticket then you get some lame response. There is no one to ever talk to except sales so you buy more. After 3 days I have no answer and I now have no access to my mail so even that louzy response I can’t get. This computor is for my business & they are costing me money and I have no where to turn for help. this company needs to be stopped as well as the all the companies that cannot even give a live person to talk to on the phone for help. If your computor is messed up how do you communicate to them through a computor. I hope they end up with a hugh class action law suit because I will be in on it. Just another scam place. That traps you and screws with your computor to get private information.

There is no malware, spyware or anything malicious contained in RegistryBooster. This has been independently verified by many download sites, who have given it a 100% clean award.

If you have any difficulty whatsoever with RegistryBooster, our Support Team have a policy to respond to queries with 24 hours, except on weekends and during extremely busy periods, when this is pushed to a maximum of 48 hours.

I just recieved the disk copy of uniblue and tweaker and am very disatisfied I did not recieve any instructions and now the only thing that will run is the trial version could you explain to me how to make this work.

When you are upgrading from the ‘trial’ to the ‘full’ version, you only need to open the currently installed ‘trial’ version and click on the “Register Now” button in the main program window. Make sure that you paste in the correct serial number supplied with your product.

Hi Rose,
As mentioned above to Ruth, we were aware of an issue with earlier versions of RegistryBooster, prior to the release of version 2.0.1107.3564. The issue was if you tried uninstalling without first closing the program, the uninstall could have failed half way because some RegistryBooster files were in use by the system and could not be deleted. When this occurred, parts of RegistryBooster remained on the computer (as in your HijackThis Log); however RegistryBooster would not be seen in the Add or Remove Programs list.

If this is the case, in order to completely remove RegistryBooster, you need to temporarily install the latest version in order for it to appear in the Add or remove programs list again. You can install the latest version from here: http://download.uniblue.com/ub/main/rb/registrybooster.exe

You will then see it in the Add or Remove programs list, and you can remove it.

Make sure you close the RegistryBooster icon from the system tray (next to the System clock) by: Right-clicking on it and choose “Exit Registry Booster” before attempting to uninstall. Registry Booster is running in the background by default. Close it and uninstall from Add or Remove Programs – No Problem!

I had the same problem of having my computer hijacked by this software. I used “system restore” to go back to an earlier time (before I had ever heard of Uniblue) and that worked great, it seems to now be gone without a trace from my computer.

HELP!! i closed it with task manager then uninstalled thru control panels remove program. shortcut was still there so clicked on it and it went nowheres so i deleted short cut. is not showing on the control panel but when i ran hijackthis….ITS STILL THERE !!!!!!

I am in the same boat as Ruth. I have the VISTA program too don’t need another Reigtry Booster. I got suckered into the Uniblue come on tactics….now I can’t get it off! I called the Dell Tech and she said it couldn’t be done…help…and in language a novice can understand.

As mentioned above, we were aware of an issue with earlier versions prior to the release of version 2.0.1107.3564. The issue was if you tried uninstalling without first closing the program, the uninstall could have failed half way because some RegistryBooster files were in use by the system and could not be deleted. When this occurred, parts of RegistryBooster remained on the computer; however RegistryBooster would not be seen in the Add or Remove Programs list.

If you have a version prior to this,in order to completely remove RegistryBooster, you need to temporarily install the latest version in order for it to appear in the Add or Remove programs list. You can install the latest version from here: http://download.uniblue.com/ub/main/rb/registrybooster.exe

You will then see it in the Add or Remove programs list, and you can remove it quickly and easily.

To Rose and Carol:
That’s the same thing that happened to me and what I have been trying to tell visitors here when they insist it can be uninstalled from the control panel. It cannot. It latches onto your registry. You have to go into the registry to get it out. It’s tricky, but can be done.
There was a gentleman who answered my plea on this Web site who told me how to go into the registry to remove it. I am sorry I didn’t save those direction. Perhaps he will show up again here. These software people are nasty. They hide. The are located somewhere in the U.K. Just try to contact them. It’s impossible.

I went back a few comments and found this. Is it the one you are referring to? If so- where do I find “Task Master”?

Thanks for the heads up response John.
I didn’t go through reading the entire review, but bottom line if you aren’t ready to purchase the software…

You are permitted 15 registry fixes for free. Over 1000 fixes were listed when it ran a scan. The settings on the control panel have it autostarting with Windows and running a scan when the system is started. So I turned those options off before removing the software.

Then I opened up Task Manager, went to the Programs running tab and aborted a rogue program that was named with an underscore as 1st character and a suffix of .tmp. There was also a rundll – so I aborted that also.

Went to the control panel and removed software – which states that Uniblue was removed successfully.

Perhaps I’m old-school in getting rid of stuff, but that’s from observing how software installed itself on Windows 3.1.

A smart move before running any registry software is to go to Start, Run…, type in REGEDIT then export the entire registry to a file. If you need to revert you can do that with a safe-mode restart and running regedit to import the clean copy of your registry.

I went back a few comments and found this. Is it the one you are referring to? If so- where do I find “Task Master”?

Thanks for the heads up response John.
I didn’t go through reading the entire review, but bottom line if you aren’t ready to purchase the software…

You are permitted 15 registry fixes for free. Over 1000 fixes were listed when it ran a scan. The settings on the control panel have it autostarting with Windows and running a scan when the system is started. So I turned those options off before removing the software.

Then I opened up Task Manager, went to the Programs running tab and aborted a rogue program that was named with an underscore as 1st character and a suffix of .tmp. There was also a rundll – so I aborted that also.

Went to the control panel and removed software – which states that Uniblue was removed successfully.

Perhaps I’m old-school in getting rid of stuff, but that’s from observing how software installed itself on Windows 3.1.

A smart move before running any registry software is to go to Start, Run…, type in REGEDIT then export the entire registry to a file. If you need to revert you can do that with a safe-mode restart and running regedit to import the clean copy of your registry.

my 2 cents…
Thanks to posts on this forum, I was ready to jump through hoops, and it works from the first try, so here it is on WinXP Home Edition:

1. Disable the autostart option under Options. Click “Apply”.

2. Open the Windows Task Manager: there are many ways to do it, my favorite is “Ctrl-Shift-Esc” key combination.
Go to the Processes tab.

3. Find the process starting with UL or UB, I think it was something like UL???Svc.exe running as SYSTEM, but can’t remember and don’t want to risk installing it again :-). Right-click on it and select “End Process Tree”. Say Yes or OK to the prompt. I take it’s a Windows service that is installed on the machine, so you have to stop it before uninstalling the software. If this is the case, a cleaner way to stop a service is to go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services (or get to Services by right-clicking on My Computer and choosing “Manage”), then finding the service in the list, then right-click and choose stop.

4. Find the process RegistryBooster.exe (if it’s there) and End Process Tree for it as well.

Don’t know why my uninstall worked so easily (I did stop it from running via the link in my system tray), but I used Revo Uninstaller and it worked great. Revo is a must-have to uninstall programs that do no show up in Add/Remove Programs, and is freeware.

For all of you guys that have the trial version.
When you turn on your computer and this thing comes up
click on ok to scan end when its finished go to Setiings wich is on the right corner of the window and you have the option if you want to run it when windows starts.
I hope this helps

As my colleague David explains near the top of the comments posted “we do not ‘trick’ our users in any way. We offer an evaluation version of our software as a ‘free scan’ – and this is exactly what the evaluation version is. It allows users to scan their PC to diagnose it for registry problems without the need to purchase. In this way if you dont need the product you dont purchase it.”

Annoying, yes. Malware? Give me a break. What a load of panic over nothing.

The program has a Settings/Options tab. Go there and uncheck all the boxes.

Right click the icon in your system tray and exit/close the program.

Go to add/remove programs in Control Panel, and tell it to uninstall. When it asks you if you really really want to remove this program, tell it “yes”.

If you can’t get this thing off your computer, try the following.

1. Unplug your computer from the wall.
2. Pick up the box thingy, the TV thing, the typewriter bit and that crazy mousy thingy.
3. Carry them all to the trash bin and insert.
4. Go to your local Kmart
5. Buy a pocket calculator
6. Type “80085” (hint – it looks like it says Boobs”).

That’s rude, Ajay, and stupid too. Don’t you think we tried your clever “directions” first? What part of THIS CANNOT BE UNINSTALLED did you not understand? When I “tell it to uninstall” it replies that I cannot uninstall it because something to uninstall it is not installed–and I’m certainly not installing anything else from them! And even if I could uninstall it, it has already messed up my computer, and uninstalling would not repair what it has done.

If you have any problems whatsoever with uninstallation, please contact our Support team, who have a policy to respond within 24 hours, except at weekends or during extremely busy periods. You can get in touch with them here:

If you guys would buy a Mac, you could remove your programs easily. Just drag them from the hard drive to the trash and not ADD/REMOVE programs. Let’s face it, no Windows program is truly ever removed. Maybe some, but not most. And, I know those .DLL files aggravate you guys. Man, I don’t know why you guys want to run a Windows native OS. What a nightmare! I love my Macbook Pro 2.4GHZ Core 2 DUO with Tiger OS X. My iSkin is so silky. I just touch it all the time. Hook my iPod up, and synch it with my newly downloaded songs. Make music, cool webpages easier, and represent my company (Apple) with the apple logo on my website. Don’t have to be embarrassed to put the Microsoft on it.

I challenge all Microsoft users to start representing their company. Start putting Microsoft stickers all over everything like Apple users put Apple stickers on PC machines to make them mad. I challenge every MIcrosoft user to start representing your company better. Put that logo on everything. At least, you could use your Microsoft logo in a creative way, maybe even do what I did on my website. I made a cool EMAIl thing with a pretty Apple by my face. I mean, when you’re proud of your machine’s company, you reprensent that company right? Share the love so to speak? Why not Microsoft users? Get a bunch of historical blue screen stickers, and go at it. You never know. You might convince someone onto the path of destruction just like the Muslim hoard.

7. Record Drew Barrymore using her Mac in Fever Pitch
and give it to a Sox fan who uses Microsoft Windows natively.

8. Tell your girlfriend she is the apple of your eye, and you need to always keep in touch.
So, give her a present: a new Macbook. Talk about long, sultry nights in iChat?

9. Christmas tree? Load it up with Apple ornaments. Tell the family it’s all about Eve eating the Apple.
After all, that’s what happened when Microsoft joined the computer industry. The fall! The fall!
Lord help us!

10. Make an apple cobbler, and eat it while you’re trying to persuade a Microsoft user to see the light.
How sweet it is!

Be Safe: It is not a wise idea to download files from IRC with a Microsoft Windows computer.. Files from untrustworthy sources may contain a virus. Only accept files from people you know and trust. It is YOUR responsibility to be safe and buy a Mac.

In response to postings 35 – 38:
OH PU-LEASE. Try to add something useful when you post and leave the MAC vs. PC thing out of it. I have better things to do with my time than read “stuff” like that!

Now: I just installed UniBlue on my machine and let it clean 15 entries. I still have to try the challenge of removal. I’ll let you know how it goes. My question is this. I was originally impressed by the review posted on this site. The reviewer gave it a 9.5 out of 10. Then I read all the comments from you guys. Does David Risley (I assume he wrote the review) have any response to our comments?

Buckaroo (#39),
David Risley here. Actually, I did not write this article. Ryan Passey did about a year ago. He is another of our occasional contributing writers.

As for my response, I have indeed been taking note of the comments. Uniblue seems to be a mixed bag. Some like their stuff, others do not. And what I want to know is if this is a PR problem for Uniblue or is there really something wrong.

We are beginning an interview series here on the site where we will doing written interviews of people in the technology arena. I have approached Uniblue for an interview. They agreed and I have sent them the interview questions. Several of the questions ask them to address some of these user concerns. So, my hope is that I will be able to soon publish direct feedback from Uniblue on these issues, and these comments played a direct role in several of the questions I asked them.

David (#40)
Great to read your response. I just followed instructions given in previous postings and had no trouble unistalling Uniblue. Following the unistall, I rebooted and checked the registry. It was clean.

On the other hand. Yes! Uniblue did try to hijack my system and it could be much more straight forward to remove than it is.

To answer your question David:
1. Something is wrong. It is difficult to exit the program when running and difficult to uninstall. As many others have expressed. This can be extremely frustrating.

2. This _IS_ also PR problem for Uniblue. Strong-arm tactics rarely encourage customers to purchase products. It definately had a negative impact on me. I will not be purchasing the software.

I don’t know whether Uniblue is good or not. That’s not the point. It hijacked my computer and I don’t like it. To me that’s an invasion of privacy. I had it on my computer whether I liked it or not and could not get it off. Every time I started my computer it ran. It invaded my registry. The average computer user doesn’t know how to clean out these pirates from the registry and they shouldn’t be messing with a registry anyway if they don’t know what they are doing. Fortunately, I met a tech on this site who taught me how to do it and I’ve kept the solution on my computer as a Word document. Regarding this company: It is offshore and there is no way to get in touch with them, I know because I tried several times.
jtisch

I see that all of you are pissed off with the software. I felt obliged to give my opinion on the software.
I have tried and am trying the following softwares for cleaning system and the registry for many years through earlier versions.
System mechanic 7, tuneup utilities 2007, registry mechanic ver. 6.00.750, Norton system works 2006, fix-it utilities 7,

The first three were and are my favorites, until I installed the registry booster. The RB was able to repair one of my problems with Out Look Express while none of the others were able to do so. I am quite satisfied with the software as far. I am not a software specialist but because the Microsoft operating systems always get full of bugs you always need a good cleaner or you have to reinstall the system from time to time. If you want to be bug free it is best to go for Mac systems, or use the above softwares for cleaning and having a fast PC.

FOR EVERYBODY LOOKING TO REMOVE. CLOSE THE LITTLE ICON ON THE BOTTOM RIGHT OF SCREEN, NEXT TO CLOCK! SIMPLY RIGHT CLICK, ‘EXIT REGISTRY BOOSTER’, FINALLY WORKED! CAME RIGHT OFF IN THE ‘ADD REMOVE PROGRAMS’

I have been running Reg Booster for several months and am pleased with how it has cleaned stuff out. I am not a nerd and approach utilities very cautiously. It was referred to me by BitDefender, AV software, which I am likewise pleased with, so I had some confidence in it. I ran their trial and it found many hundreds of errors, so I paid for the activated version. Haven’t been disappointed. I always run it manually – easy to set up in settings – and I haven’t been unhappily surprised yet.

I made the mistake of installing the trial software on my PC. My machine is running at stone age pace which means the uninstall process has taken me 4 hours so far and is still unsuccesful. I am working through the various suggested fixes but like others before me simply uninstalling from the add/ remove programs has not worked.This company need closing down.

A lot of software can be difficult to remove if it is actually loaded into memory during the removal process.

What happens is that (if the software is not well designed), parts of it will be removed but some artifacts may still be active.

The following MIGHT provide a solution:
1. re-install the offending software (yes, I know that’s scary).
2. load the software and find the options/setup menu and disable all such things as “run in background” or “run on startup”.
3. close the program
4. reboot
5. now run the delete software option from the control panel — this time the undelete should complete successfully (and will remove previous garbage, too).

I also was tricked into installing the trial version and since it found more than 300 errors I thought about purchasing it. I decided to first see what others were saying and after reading this site decided to remove it. It was very simple.

Exit the program from the bottom right corner (right click icon and exit.

Go to add/remove programs and click remove.

Pffffft! It was gone.

I re-booted to make sure and there is no sign of the program. I have Windows XP Home Edition.

Downloaded a trial version to try out. Running Win XP Pro, SP2 (fresh install), on a very fast system with multiple 15K SCSI HDs, 5 GB of dual-mode DDR RAM, etc., Uniblue Registry Booster slowed system startup by nearly a minute (approx. 80%). Decided I wasn’t interested in purchasing it, but as an experiment, having read the preceding posts, I decided to disable it rather than uninstalling it, using Start/Programs/Windows Defender/Tools/Software Explorer/Startup Programs/Uniblue Registry Booster/Disable.

classifies startup programs as “Permitted” (i.e., start automatically at bootup), “Disabled” (do not start automatically), or “Not yet classified” (which simply means that Defender does not recognize them and therefore cannot accurately state whether they start automatically or not. Uniblue Registry Booster falls into this last category, Not yet classified.)

When I changed the setting for Uniblue Registry Booster to “Disabled”, and rebooted, Unible Registry Booster overrode this change and again ran at startup. When I re-examined the info for it in Windows Defender, rather than finding the entry changed back to “Not yet classified” or even changed to “Permitted”, what I instead found was that the program had allowed the change to “Disabled” to survive but had simply spawned a second, whole new entry (listed immediately prior to the original one), but again with the setting “Not yet classified”. So the program apparently resists being disabled (“perhaps” as a legitimate self-defense mechanism to avoid being disabled by Trojans or other malware), by replicating its startup registry key with the original value.

This behavior may help to explain the difficulty some readers have in disabling or uninstalling it. I assume the reader who found going into Registry Booster’s settings and disabling it from running in all ways there, and then deleting the product, may be the best way to overcome the product’s tendency toward self-preservation.

It sure seems that you’re not the brightest geeks in the world, hey? I had problems with Uniblue products – they made my computer crash. After several unistallations it finally started working. If uninstalling is so hard thing to handle, go for Your Uninstaller!. It’ll wipe your problems away.

I have been reading some of the posts, and I have to say that the people who cannot remove the uniblue program probably don’t have sufficient computer skills, because it is very simple, also any post here should be on how the program has worked or non worked, I have not used this program as of yet but plan to, registry heath is important on any computer and it does not matter if your are running XP or Vista, both can benefit by keep your registry free of clutter and also the defragmenting, this all helps your computer run more efficient, it’s like changing the oil in your car…. I will post my final review after loading it and running it through it’s paces.

Used Uniblue Reg Booster and also Registry Mechanic and Aulogiics Boostpeed.
Uniblue- fantastic program worked like a treat and never had trouble- I am verye surprised to see the other posters had so many issues.
PS- Vista is a heap of ship- most advanced programs conflict with it and it has major issues in allocating memory. I ah to uninstall Premier for XP to get $000U music programs to work
Ubuntu and Linux are far superior to Vista, as is Apples’ new Leopard OS/X- streets ahead.
Pity MicroSoft has the stranglehold on PC platforms- otherwise we may actually get an orange instead of a MS lemon. I hate that greedy nerd Gates.

RB 2 is killing me. I bought two copies, because it handled some severe problems I had with my laptop. I have had it just over a month and both laptops have a “Runtime” error and won’t complete a scan. I can’t get any response from the company, but they do have a $9.95 Premium Support program. Isn’t that wonderful. $60.00 and a screwed up computer. Avoid this product. I am going to try to stop my credit card payment. Wish me luck.

Everyone gets premium 24/7 support for free. We used to offer support for a premium but that was well over a year ago. Also, if for any reason you aren’t satisfied with any product that we offer, we offer a full 30 day money back guarantee.

Uniblue trial was recommended by Acronis whose True Image backup software I am very happy with so I had no idea how much trouble I would have with Uniblue.
Having run the trial and fixed 15 errors, I became a bit suspicious and exited via the icon on the status bar.
I then did Start/All Programs/Uniblue/Uninstall.
I checked on Control Panel/Add and Remove Programs – Uniblue wasn’t shown.
I ran msconfig and saw that it was still shown in the Startup so I disabled it and rebooted.
Uniblue is still shown in Application Data in Explorer and there are various keys in the registry.
I tried System Restore to several points but on restart, I get the message “cannot restore to earlier point, no changes made”.
I have read all the messages above and have tried all the suggestions. Can someone PLEASE tell me how to get rid of this stuff?

i don’t know about you guys but uniblue to me is iight…….i had so stuff i moved off my pc and backed up to a dvd…..ran unblue and i saw alot of shortcuts and other stuff leaft behind…i ran it twice…the first tim deleted all wat waz found and the second time…i found nothing…..registry bosster and and speed up my pc 3 to me are good programs

I just deinstalled it and it looks like its gone but when i check msconfig its still listed under “startup” but i cant see it in my “running processes”. Anyone know how to get rid of it so it wont even show in msconfig? I unchecked it so i think it doesnt do anything but still kinda annoying.

I’ve read the the whole tread and find it hard to beleive
that so many people didn’t like it, or didn’t work, as I’m very happy with the program and it does what is supposed to do V2.0.1092.3366. I guess some got to try earlier versions of the program and not as well developed. As for
the uninstalling thing I’ve got Your Uninstaller and use it often when trying other software and hasn’t let me down
yet.

Even after uninstalling the program, removing the icon from the tray, and dumping the program from Task Manager/Processes, it is still embedded in the Registry, in multiple locations and ways. In addition to the removal routines mentioned above (kill the System Tray icon dump the program from Task Manager/Processes and Task Manager/Applications (if it’s running there), and Uninstall), go to the Regedit/Edit/Find function, and search for all occurrences of Uniblue. Remove them all. You may find that there’s a “spyware” program that operates along the same lines, also a Uniblue product, that is embedded in one or more of the Uniblue folders as well. Dump it at the same time. There may be others. Dump anything in a Uniblue folder. Recheck Task Manager/Processes and Task Manager/Applications to make sure no Uniblue products are running when you reboot.

Well, it may well be malware? Whatever it is it doesn’t sound much use to me!

Its funny how people are defending it when it cleary causes people alot of problems. How can something be good that causes alot of problems?! Cmon, that doesn’t sound logical to me! I mean its common sense really isn’t it?
I wouldn’t let this thing ‘scan’ my registry for 100 bucks! More like ‘modify’ my registry! If it needs ‘modifying’ then I will do it thank you very much.
Wouldn’t touch it with gloves on…..

Jtisch comment 43 …. personally I agree much…
I am having to look into this because a ‘beginner’ has had problems….
That’s not good when we are trying to learn things and it’s already difficult anyway. Programs that offer help yet may cause problems…. help is one thing but it all depends on ‘what kind of help’ !!! Help may well be hinderance…. “if it works, then don’t fix it”… famous last words….

I agree with much of the negative reviews I read above. I purchased the product last week, and becuase it had “Microsoft Business Partner” all over it, I thought I might have finally founds something that was going to work. However, I too had the same issues as others listed above, and although it fixed a bunch of stuff (registered version of the suite), I ended up having to uninstall it on my home/work machines as it was a resource hog, etc. I highly recommend http://www.answersthatwork.com and the admins who use it lable uniblue as a virus… I thought it was hilarious…. incidently, I registered TUT and it has significantly assisted my home/work machines to run faster, and explain what it was doing in english.

I just purchased the software and must say that I was surprised of how much it actually increased the performance of my PC. Had an annoying application error that is now fixed thanks to this software. So, I must say that I cannot agree to the above comments. I find it very good and well worth the money.

I have to laugh reading some of the comments here, especially those whining about RB leaving it’s mark in their registry!

Just about everything you remove leaves a trace behind, no matter how good your uninstaller is… it’s forever been a problem with Windows Registry and is NOT the fault of Registry Booster or any other program you’ve ever installed or uninstalled. Registry Booster seems to fix most, if not all, of these registry problems, but obviously can’t fix it’s own traces from registry once you’ve gone and removed it! So if you are that upset about it, use the manual removal from registry suggested by several previous posters.. or better yet if you are that uneducated in how the system works, get a tech officer to do EVERYTHING for you… even if your tech support is a dumb as mine seems to be, you at least have someone else to blame rather than your own inadequacies.

As for me, I’m very happy with this program. I’ve been running this laptop for over 3 years now, and it has slowly developed little annoying errors and been slowing down…. lately a problem with Windows Explorer has crept in that crashes it, closing all my open windows and annoying the hell out of me. Well, after I installed Registry Booster the problem disappeared! I’ve been five days free of the problem, when previously I’d be lucky to go more than an hour without all my open windows closing through the explorer crash.

And for most of the dumbasses here who don’t understand how Windows works, I’m talking about Windows Explorer, not Internet Explorer…. for the morons, Windows Explorer is the one that lets you open folders etc, and locate your programs and files… dead annoying if it crashes, especially when you are trying to open a folder.

I just installed it on my computer and had no problems with uninstalling it. Although I had the full version, not trial, so maybe it does something I’m unaware of during trial version. Even though I have tuneup utilities I found this while looking for a problem with a program running in my task manager. I used it and it detected 100 errors that tuneup didn’t. I repaired and defragged and tuneup still didn’t detect any more errors after that, and my comp ran a little faster I think, or maybe it was just because I restarted. But it seems fine as a program. I went into start, all programs, registry booster, and hit the uninstall reg booster and it was fine.

I also denied the program to access to changing the registry to start during startup. I’m good like that.

I should also note that after I uninstalled it and ran tuneup’s registry cleaner, the only errors it detected from my registry were history lists or something like that(which is normal whenever you uninstall stuff or delete stuff off your computer). There were no activex or program registry errors at all. It also didn’t leave a folder or any data behind in my program files folder, or under control panel, add and remove programs.

If you look at those stats it is obvious that a 1 second decrease in start up (see trial 2) times is nothing and for $29-95 is a rip-off. The fact that you advertise the product in banners on your site is only ever going to damage your reputation. It’s a shame when people make their corrupt intention so open for all to see. I’m glad that young people aren’t stupid enough to fall for it!

I’m going to check out this software and will report my findings, but I must confess something. It irritates the hell out of me that I’m forced to investigate and deal with these nagging Windows issues. I was forced into the PC world for professional reasons years ago. Otherwise, I would have remained with Mac, plain and simple. I just purchased a Dell Precision M6300 mobile workstation after a very disappointing investigation into the possibility of FINALLY stepping into something like a MacBook Pro…oh well, I’ll look into it again in another 3 years. BTW, this is not some Mac vs PC exercise, but merely a statement of truth: one machine remains vastly superior and the other stormed the world via slick marketing while attempting to imitate the former. If all of us were Mac users, all this buzz and consumption of precious time would be moot…although in all fairness, we would spend some of the time batting around Mac annoyances

Alot of the issues on the windows platform can be isolated. The Registry, you and edit the startups in HKEY_Local_Machine and HKEY_current_user, in software/microsoft/currentversion/run for both each hierarchy subkey. Also, you can make a backup, of your entire registry, or just individual HKEY’s or even for programs. You might also find Mandriva linux interesting John. I have been working with mandrake since 2004 in the spring, and carried on into when they changed to mandriva because of connectiva. Also I spent about 2 years with debian, and 1 1/2 years with ubuntu. Even with Xandros, gentoo, fedora core, FreeBSD , PC-BSD and the many other distributions. You can get a different feel of how controlling you can be of the operating system. In which with modern kernels. They are compiled for i586, i686. XP alone is compiled for i386. If Microsoft would really get into kernel hacking, release the code to developers, reverse engineers, coders, etc, hackers.. Windows would be changed forever. People would be using whatever desktop environments they want, and not having to stick with the window manager for windows, “Explorer” aka explorer.exe. Also for deciding to edit services, aka daemons. and literally controlling every aspect of the system. And say they needed to update the kernel, to support some exotic hardware of theres or to get it working to maximum potential, they could do so. Its 1 thing to optimize windows, but then its another thing when you isolate it inside a secure linux distribution with vmware workstation

Sorry for my typos, I worked a long day @ O’Reilly Auto Parts” . Then I finished up working on 2 systems for 2 clients. Big $ involved :-), and also was doing some coding on mandriva. Also I wanted to state, its more of configuration files you deal with in linux, rather than a registry that yo have to worry about crashing. Another thing I encourage, is teach yourself how to source compile, study the linux file directory structure, linux kernel. Learn how to write simple bash scripts, and then study into whatever else you want to master. You can do anything you put your mind to. Forgive me again if my grammar is off, I didn’t intend for this to be professional. I wish I had better English skills, however English was 1 of my subjects in school I hated with a passion. Dont’ hesitate to send me an email @ clintsnet@hotmail.com or clintsnet@gmail.com ::: I’m working on a website this year for my business.

To All the contributors on the Uniblue dialog: you all are great and better than any chat room. I fell upon this dialog researching Uniblue and other clean up software. I laughed very hard this Sunday am, and I do have the trial version–if you all get time, can you recommend your favorites in registry clean up ???? I’ll let you know if I can disengage the trial, you all are the best! Thank you!

I’d like to share past experience with the product. Hope you are listening. Annoyances, Constant start-up although i unchecked it 50 times in every way possible, uninstallment, ect. I got the Full Version, seeing as i have SpyShredder installed into my computer, and saw that it fixed it out. But, not only did the SpyShredder find it’s way back through to my computer from Uniblue Uninstallment because i was too slow to uninstall Uniblue, but complete uninstallment is a harrasment. i’m just about to follow Ajay post 33, with the acception to the last step. I dare those people who love it, or found that easy uninstallment was the way to go, to either do a complete tower scan, full thorough look into life and tell me you haven’t found 50 more things on uniblue RegistryBooster. For those stupid enough not to, i suggest installing all the malware you can, send it out to people, then see if RegistryBooster can fix that.
Thank you for your time
Metal

There must be two versions of this company, software etc.
Luckily I chose the right one! (by chance?)
A bit over a year ago, I found and purchased one of their products and then purchased their Powersuite, which included the original product that I had purchased. After a couple of e-mails they refunded the cost of the original product – the whole amount I think! All sorted within a week of the original purchase. Not Bad!
Since then, I have being using several of their products, including SpyEraser and Registry Booster and they have been Good to Very Good, with no real problems.
The Registry Booster window won’t go past the edge of the screen; it just stops at the edge so it cannot be moved from the centre of the screen. However it can be minimised, so it’s no big deal, which is why I haven’t reported it.
I have had other, similar, software from other companies and, while I didn’t conduct a controlled experiment, I have found that their software does a reasonable to good good job in keeping my PC clean and not screwing it up.
My only puzzle is that I haven’t found many reviews on it.

with certain applications developed.. they might have dependencies with .Net Framework 1, 2, and 3, so I recommend you install the .Net Framework packages :), That should fix your issue, I tested the RegistryBooster when it was released, same with spyeraser, and speedupmypc, speedupmypc, required dependencies, if not met.. it would cause a conflict at system startup.. in which when installed, values are thrown into HKEY local machine, etc, software, windows, currentuser, run, just like we do in the linux world , and even with unix.. If dependencies are not met for the program, because of how it was compiled.. optimized etc.. the program will hot work right.. same applies to software for windows. Developers are developing this software, usually alot in C, and C++ etc.. Visual Studio, python,

Like so many across the web, I had the exact same problems with this SCAMWARE! I don’t give a damn that Microsoft has supposedly “Certified it” or whatever! That’s not saying a lot coming from them. Microsoft is not known as the most ethical company in the world and they constantly make “mistakes”.

Bottom line – With this many people all over the world having the exact same problem with UniBlue Registry Booster, its far more than just coincidence.

1. There is no uninstall command available in the Start-All Programs menu for Uniblue. That’s the first sign of SCAMWARE. Make their program nag you and then make it very hard to uninstall.

2. You run the program, the window won’t enlarge making it difficult to use and make decisions on what to let it clean. Another sign of a crappy product.

3. Tried all the suggestions and got the same scam error code 000unist not found or whatever.

4. Went to the program file and tried to activate the “kill process” and then the uninstall – same results – nothing.

5. They bury this thing deep in the registry with no easy means of unburying it, and they don’t want you to uninstall it, they want you to buy it!

I installed the trial versions of RegistryBooster and SpyEraser a couple of weeks ago. RegistryBooster found almost 2000 registry errors and fixed 15. This system has been around a long time, probably started as an NT system, then upgraded to Win2K, then XP…

I still haven’t decided whether to buy it or not — I’m more than a little concerend about deleting too much — I had this with a version of Norton SystemWorks a few years back.

I decided to uninstall the trial versions — I always stop the programs in the system tray, anyway… All I had to do is a control panel/add or remove programs/ and they’re gone. I really don’t see what people are bitching about. I’ve been a PC power user for over 20 years, but no special skill was needed here.

thing of this i have tons of spy ware and now its all gone thx to uniblue, Its fine by me but if you dont trust them dont buy them Your loss… Btw t only fixes 15 items for trail i love the program so much i bought speed up my pc and spy eraser 2 They all work 100% just thoes extra nasty spy wares Win32 Root-kit [Rk] cant be fixed you have to reinstall your whole computer to fix that

you would be a fool not to purchase there programs =\
uniblue is updateing so they can fix more errors and the more the people that have it can send in feed so they can Fix that to i still have some spy ware 2 files but there undeleteable

Stupidly enough, as a computer novice I followed the wrong order and purchased the RegistryBooster before reading the rather enlightening statements in this column. This turned out to be a truly fatal error: after running the program, my computer – like Emily’s – malfunctioned to such an extent that I had to set it up again from scratch..

I bought Uniblue’s RegistryBooster and I must say that I am very happy with the product. My PC is working much smoother now and the start up time has decreased significantly. To be honest I don’t know why so many people are leaving bad feedback about RegistryBooster.

I’m Hilary Rogers from Uniblue. I have read all the comments with interest and have noted all your concerns. I hope that I can set the record straight on a few of the posts above!

We are aware that some users who utilized trial versions (free scans) had difficulty in uninstalling the software. This wasn’t intentional, and this was caused by the fact that the software was running in the System Tray when the user tried to delete the program. This wasn’t clear to many users, and, once alerted, we acted on it immediately. In response, we have developed a new feature which closes the program automatically when the user starts to uninstall. These free scans are diagnostic – RegistryBooster alerts the user to any potential problems in the registry.

What are you people idiots? Just stop the program from running in the background and uninstall it. Took me 10 seconds if even. If you can’t figure that out, you shouldn’t be downloading and installing software from the internet to begin with. Perhaps this is why your registry is messed up to begin with hmmmm?

i used this for awhile now and its great. the only thing i didnt like is that it autostarts and you cant disable it in the program itself(the button doesnt work for me) however i just went to msconfig and disabled it there and it worked.

I have been using a little utility program for years which “looks over my shoulder” whenever I install or update a program – it’s called WinPatrol and when I installed RB2 to try it out, WinPatrol alerted me that the program wanted to install itself as a Startup program, to which I said “No”. Simple! It also views and manages cookies, tasks, services, etc., and the Plus version gives you info on obscure startup programs and services so you can identify them. Great little program.

Anyway, I have read enough positive reviews from technically-savvy users about RB2 that I will probably buy it. However, I will see what happens the next few reboots – if it wants to install into startup every single time, that’s not good, as I prefer to have more control and run things like this manually – I already have what I think are too many processes that have to run all the time. I also keep my system tray fully-viewable so I can close down certain startups that I know aren’t needed the rest of the day after they’ve run once. Keeping your PC clean is a full-time job, people!

Now, if you want to complain about supposedly legitimate software that takes control of your computer, is buggy, leaves traces all over the place, constantly tries to reinstall startup options, and often doesn’t do what it promises because of hard-to-find conflicts, try Adobe Acrobat Professional. Good lord, what a mess that software is – and it costs a bloody fortune. I’m looking for a reg cleaner that will help keep the rest of my PC running smoothly because Acrobat Pro is such a hog…

erm .. i just install yesterday .. but after i run this problem .. suddenly it popup the error, “microsoft visual C++ runtime library” .. then after checking .. the problem come from modname called ubvarrb.dll .. how to solve this problem ?

I tried the trial version once, and it found 360 errors in my registry. Ever since I recieved the Powersuite with the full package, I have got to say this to Uniblue:

Great software guys!

My computer was plagued with crashes and freezes because of my RAM which is too low for Vista (1 Gb). However, ever since I’ve aquired Uniblue Powersuite, I was able to optimize my computer, clean all the broken links and keys, and I got around to make more memory clear and setting up memory used for apps.

Ever since I ran these scans and repairs, my computer is no longer plagued by these problems, I still occur problems, but they are small and nothing big to think of all the time I’m busy.

Thanks to Uniblue, I can easily play games or surf the web without having the thought Vista could freeze up any moment.

I really recommend the Uniblue software, if you’ll be buying it, definitly go for the Powersuite package!

Uniblue is advertising “System Tweaker” when you purchase Registry Booster however I cannot find anywhere a description of System Tweaker. It’s not listed under their Products. So, what is this mysterious “System Tweaker”?

System Tweaker is a System Management application. This can customize virtually every aspect of a PC -personal preferences come into play as the user can adjust and enhance settings to their individual requirement.
With a few clicks you can take advantage of the following:

? Use up to 1000 different tweaks to take control of your system
? Navigate simply and quickly through Windows and System settings
? Adjust how Windows appears and streamline its efficiency
? Make Windows more secure
? Enhance Internet Explorer and other key applications
? Simplify and speed up your startup and shutdown procedures.

System Tweaker is sometimes bundled with RegistryBooster and SpeedUpMyPC as an offer. The product isn’t currently available on a stand-alone basis, but if you require any more information, please get in touch with me: hilaryr@uniblue.net

I purchased RB2, but I have abandoned using it for two reasons that I have just submitted to Uniblue support.

1 – The list of “errors” that RB2 presents you with after its scan presents each error in a small block field. This block field is not sufficiently large to contain the full text of many registry entries which have very long IDs. There is no way to scroll the text of these error messages. There is no way to enlarge the window in order to make the text area larger. Thus you must either blindly choose to accept and clear the “errors” that RB2 claims exist or else not use the product for any but the errors that do fit within the text fields so that they can be evaluated as to whether to accept or ignore the “error.”

2 – Blindly (since there is no other choice) accepting the “errors” that RB2 lists is dangerous. I found that it had corrupted my OmniPage SE4 installation in such a way that every time I went into Windows Explorer and right-clicked on a file name, OmniPage would jump in and want to be reinstalled. Just to be certain that RB2 was the culprit, I reinstalled OP, and it now worked fine. I then re-ran RB2 and the OP-related problem reared its ugly head again.

So RB2 is wiping out valid aspects of properly installed software, and I have no way of finding on the list of “errors” which supposed “error” it is that is causing this so that I can ignore that in the cleaning and in future scans.

Bottom line — I have purchased software that is going unused because it is not ready for prime time.

We do answer ALL queries, usually within a 24 hour time frame. (Might occassionaly take up to 48 hours if you post during the weekend)

As for your question, yes, Registry Booster is sold as yearly subscription. An active subscription entitles users to get any new versions for free. Apart from the 30-day money back guarantee, user can also opt out from the yearly subscription at any time.

I hope this answers your query feel free to contact Uniblue Support with on the above link should you require further information.

Sorry uniblue but downloaded it today must be latest system. Taken 2 hours to try and delete It was done by uninstall via control panel. Waste of time still popping up and still killing it. Its not in msconfig or regdit. never again

What a mess , gave the trial version a go and its a nightmare! Uninstalled it ok but on every start up have a registrybooster2 error message which you cant get rid of. be VERY VERY carefull with this product appears to have scamware properties

I can assure you that RegistryBooster 2 is not scamware. Uniblue is a Microsoft Gold Partner, and we comply with anti-spam policies and there is no malware in any of our products. This has been verified by independent reviews and tests.

If you have any issues whatsoever, can you please contact our support team who will get back to you within 24 hours on weekdays (48 hours on weekends and busy periods).

I have read through every single post and response on this list. Quite frankly, it appears that my rule of always verifying the quality and potential harm of a program ‘before’ installing it, is the only way to go. In reading all of these problems and issues, I see a long running theme; the program tends to have many flaws, in spite of the ‘improvements’, and for the average, ‘non-geek’ user, like my wife, for example, it is more frustration than help. But, far more unnerving is Hilary’s standard response of “go to ………./support/ticket”. The recurring theme seems to be that Hilary spends most of her time just putting out fires because of this program. I have countless programs on all of my computers that have run flawlessly for years, ‘right-out-of-the-box’. Downloading ‘freeware’ is always risky, but I fully expect that after years of developing software, the products I buy in this generation of programs should not be fraught with problems. The gimmick of teasing you with finding all the registry issues but not fixing them unless you purchase it is rather standard marketing fare, but, not since the days of W95/98, have I seen a product that appears to have such a history of issues associated with it. The number of quality programs available these days tells me that this is not an investment that I am going to make.

I loaded the program a couple years ago, and it upset me in two ways. First, I could only fix a couple errors, as the trial version stated; It found hundreds of errors. My computer was so bogged down, I sprung for the fee. It was well worth the money, as I value my time. The full version saved me days of aggrivation.

Uni-blue Registry Booster is a sham. I was fool enough to pay for the full version after their phree trial “found” hundreds of registry problems on my computer. The total final effect: I’m out US$ 30. That’s it. NO boost to my computer, registry, or anything else. This scam is less than worthless. Avoid it.

Registry Booster 2 has a much improved scanning engine, that can find a high number of invalid entries.

Removing such invalid entries will result in a “cleaner” registry and a smaller registry means a faster registry.

Some computers might have other performance bottlenecks other than registry related problems… limited amount of memory for example. Uniblue offers a 30-day money back guarantee on all products, should the end-user not be entirely satisfied with the results.

Since downloading the Uniblue trial version a couple of weeks ago, I have been unable to rid my computer of continious registrybooster2 error messages. I do not buy the concept that ignorance of technology on the part of the users is to blame for these issues; responsible manufacturers design products in such a way that relatively uninformed users can operate them without fear of causing significant harm or near irreperable nuisance to their equipment. It seems irrelevant to me, that Uniblue insist their product is not scamware, and that all the destruction/nuisance caused by it, is unintentional. The critical issue for me is that the product has properties associated with scamware and behaves like scamware. If it walks, quacks and looks like a duck……..it’s SCAMWARE.

It has now been one month since I posted this and was told to expect an ASAP response. But there has been no repsonse.

Walter Johnston on 4/1/2008 at 18:38 pm (Reply)
I purchased RB2, but I have abandoned using it for two reasons that I have just submitted to Uniblue support.

1 – The list of “errors” that RB2 presents you with after its scan presents each error in a small block field. This block field is not sufficiently large to contain the full text of many registry entries which have very long IDs. There is no way to scroll the text of these error messages. There is no way to enlarge the window in order to make the text area larger. Thus you must either blindly choose to accept and clear the “errors” that RB2 claims exist or else not use the product for any but the errors that do fit within the text fields so that they can be evaluated as to whether to accept or ignore the “error.”

2 – Blindly (since there is no other choice) accepting the “errors” that RB2 lists is dangerous. I found that it had corrupted my OmniPage SE4 installation in such a way that every time I went into Windows Explorer and right-clicked on a file name, OmniPage would jump in and want to be reinstalled. Just to be certain that RB2 was the culprit, I reinstalled OP, and it now worked fine. I then re-ran RB2 and the OP-related problem reared its ugly head again.

So RB2 is wiping out valid aspects of properly installed software, and I have no way of finding on the list of “errors” which supposed “error” it is that is causing this so that I can ignore that in the cleaning and in future scans.

Bottom line — I have purchased software that is going unused because it is not ready for prime time.

I am the Support Manager at Uniblue Systems. I can assure you that we do reply to all customer queries within 24 hours. I have ran a search in our support platform and verified that a response was actually sent to within 9 hours of recieving your query. Since it seems you did not get to see this reply (perhaps it was trapped in some spam filter?), I am pasting a copy or our reply here:

Dear Walter Wesley Johnston,

Thank you for contacting Uniblue Systems. I am sorry to hear that Registry Booster did not meet your expectations.

We have a number of improvements already planned for version 3 of Registry Booster, window resizing is one of them. In the meantime, kindly note that the current version of Registry Booster includes a detailed log view if you click on the “Show Last Scan Log Result” link in the top right corner of the Scan results window. Although this might not be the ideal way, it is a work-around that you can use until the truncation issue is addressed.

As for Registry Booster affecting OmniPage, first kindly make sure that you are using latest version of Registry Booster (Build 2.0.1114.3657). You can check the build number by clicking on the “About” link at the bottom of the Registry Booster window. We are constantly tweaking the software to make it more aware of 3rd party software which creates registry entries in a way Registry Booster might think they are invalid.

If you are using the latest version and you are still encountering this issue, than all you need to do is add the offending key(s) to Registry Booster’s ignore list. In order to do this, kindly follow these steps:
1) Run a Registry Booster scan and fix
2) Restart computer
3) Re-install Omnipage
4) Restart computer
5) Re-Run a Registry Booster scan, but do not fix…
6) Any registry entries found will belong to Omnipage since that’s the only program you have installed since the last scan… right-click on the entry/ies found and select “Add to Ignore list”. This is a one-time procedure.

From now on, Registry Booster will ignore Omnipage entries and both programs can co-live together.

I hope this answers your query. Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Thanks for posting this. I do not use spam filters; so I have no idea what happened to the e-mail you had sent. Please send an e-mail to me at that address again but also reply here so that I know that the e-mail has been sent.

I do indeed have Build 2.0.1114.3657. I tried your systematic approach. I needed a block of time and that did not happen until now.

I ran RB2, had it do all the fixes, and then rebooted. I then tried something that I normally had not been doing. I had normally been running all three of your tools one after the other. So this time I followed your advice and tried running OmniPage (since that invokes the reinstall), and there was no problem with OmniPage.

So I went on to my usual next step: I ran SpeedUpMyPC3 (Build 3.5.2432.189) and had it optimize all four choices. I then tried starting up OmniPage and now it wanted a resinstall. I had thought that RB2 was the culprit, since it was working in the registry, but the real culprit is SUMPC3.

So I immediately reinstalled OmniPage and then re-ran SUMPC3, and SUMPC found 4 files that it called junk files and 21 privacy protector problems — even though the only thing that I had done since it wiped these clean was to reinstall OP. I saw no way to look at nor to override these 25 “problems” that SUMPC was flagging. So I did not have it do anything.

So the problem is SUMPC3. And to me that makes it even more dangerous. I thought that SUMPC could not corrupt software because it was looking only at things that had nothing to do with software. But it is corrupting my OmniPage SE4 installation.

This concludes that the issue was not Registry Booster related, but possibly another Uniblue product, SpeedUpMyPC. I have sent you detailed instructions by email (@aol) on how to setup SpeedUpMyPC temporary files detection in order to eliminate any such issues.
In order to respect the subject of this forum (Registry Booster) it’s best that we continue the discussion about other products by email. If you did not get my reply, perhaps we do not have your correct email address… kindly submit a new ticket here: http://www.liutilities.com/support/ticket and put “Attn: Frank Attard” in the subject.

I have been watching this whole matter unfold for quite some time. And, as I noted earlier, it appears that this is not an advisable product for the ‘average’ home user with limited technical background (like my wife for example). ‘Buying’ a product that you have to ‘force fit’ into your system is an absurd thought to begin with. The days of the ‘this might not work on your system’ level of software is past. People want to embrace ‘friendly’ technology to help with their busy lives, not add to the headaches. ‘Buying’ a program and then having to spend countless hours and emails trying to fix it suggests that you folks are in the wrong line of work.

Thank you for posting your comments. I can assure you that the Registry Booster installation and scanning is a smooth process. However technical users will know that when dealing with the Windows registry, there is no 100% foolproof method. A registry cleaner scan can lean towards the “safe” side and probably leave a number of invalid entries behind, or else be too aggressive and possibly affect third party products. Uniblue Registry Booster is renowned for the balance between the two and is verified by independent expert reviewers (such as Ryan who wrote this review).

As you can see, we at Uniblue do monitor and take into account all user feedback – both the ones that come directly to us and also those who choose to write on forums – so that we can continually improve the user experience with our products. I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the users for their feedback which helps us to enhance our software.

A point to remember is that Uniblue offers a 30-day money back guarantee on all Registry Booster purchases. If for whatever reason, a customer is not entirely satisfied with the product he can opt for a refund within these 30 days.

I’m replying to this post in hopes that I get some answers I’m not getting from Uniblue’s support. I have 2 trouble tickets open: LTK15601249997X and LTK15601283602X. The first ticket is because my computer hangs when I’m trying to clean the registry of 1000 errors from the Shared DLL section. The second ticket is a request for a refund.

According to the support tech, placing a line in the Ignore tab would take care of my issue. Well, yes it did… it ignored my 1000 errors. Take the ignore line out, the 1000 errors are still there. That’s kind of like “ignore the problem, it will go away”, don’t you think?.

I’ve gotten no response regarding my refund request. You offer a 30 days money back satisfaction guarantee. If your product doesn’t work for me, I’m not satisfied.

My third issue, upon checking my bank account, shows a $.90 fee for an International Transaction Fee that was NOT on my receipt, it was added on two days later without my knowledge. It’s not the amount, it’s the principle that a fee can be tacked on that did not appear on my receipt for purchase.

I’m also going to email Hilary since her email address has been published here on this forum. I’m going to also submit a third trouble ticket with Uniblue. I do expect a prompt response and solution. Thank you.

My name is Frank and I am the Support Manager at Uniblue Systems. I thank you for your continued communication with us and apologize if troubleshooting your particular issue was a bit lengthy and intensive. I have immediately refunded your Registry Booster order and will answer each of your issues below:

1) Placing the line in the Ignore tab, is part of our troubleshooting procedures in order to verify whether the issue lies in accessing individual keys in the registry or elsewhere. This is not a “solution” but a “means to understand the issue and get to the solution”.

2) I apologize for you not getting a reply about your refund request. Our support system can detect and combine separate tickets which belong to the same issue. Since you were still communicating with us on a daily basis (and never mentioned the refund) on ticket LTK15601249997X, we thought you may prefer to solve the issue rather than jump in for the refund straight away. Since now you made it clear you prefer the refund, this has now been processed immediately.

3) As you can see on our website, Uniblue Systems is based in Europe. If your bank charges you additional processing fees for international payments, this is beyond our control and we are not in a position to show them in the shopping cart or on the receipt sent by us (since we are not aware of them). This issue should be settled with your bank/credit card issuer.

Lastly, going through your communication with our Tech Support, I can see that you did get our promised one-day responses. Troubleshooting registry issues can sometimes be a lengthy procedure especially when other 3rd party security utilities are also accessing/protecting the registry. I am sorry it did not work out in this case.

Should you require further assistance, kindly continue to communicate through the standard support channels.

Hello All,
I was one of the people that does not like some software messing around in the Registry of my PC, but after reading the reviews and giving it a try found it to be very effective. I bought the Uniblue Suite and I am very satisfied with it’s results. My PC is running much quicker, more stable and stronger than before using this product. I would love to belong to such a group of folks and sell this to others so they can keep their PC’s out of the repair shop because of the Registry problems caused over time. I think this product is just GREAT. Everyone should have it on thier PC saving both valuable Down Time and Money.
Uniblue is Great – Who Knew? The Train

Glad to have found this review and these comments. I was on the verge of buying this product… in fact, had all my info filled out and was just about to put my credit card in. But looking at the results… maybe if my system was bogged down I would give it a shot. But my laptop, despite showing 644 dead files / broken links, is still pretty spritely. To top it all off, just check out the user comments.

I’m a computer savvy guy and it was NO problem for me to remove the trial version. Close it, exit out of the taskbar icon, go to the containing folder and select uninstall. However, doesn’t sound like it’s worth the price to me personally. Maybe for $7 or $8, certainly not $30.

This is crap. Your denials about this program attaching itself to computers is rubbish. I never downloaded the trial version. I booted up one day and it was there. This is nothing but malaware in my opinion. This is a terrrible way to do business. I already have a registry cleaner and it is a good one. I don’t need another one. Terrible company and a terrible product. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.

“Uniblue offers a free trial version of Registry Booster in order to give customers the option to test the effectiveness of Registry Booster’s registry scan engine. We promote these free trial versions as “Free Scans”, however its up to the end user to decide whether he or she wants to take the Free Scan – by clicking on the button and downloading the product – or not. We don’t install ANYTHING without the user intentionally initiating the download process.”

I wish I read these comments before trying RegistryBooster2. I’ve uninstalled it. It is not found in Program Files. I’ve tried searches on various file names. It continues to run somewhere in the background requesting to change the registry (Spybot) and be added to the startup list (WinPatrol). Uniblue’s solution was to use add/remove programs which was the first thing I did. I desperately need help in getting this monkey off my back.

I agree with Barry re malware. I tried the trial version and now cannot get rid of it. I’ve removed it via add/remove programs. It is not in the program file. I’ve searched using various parameters to try and find it. It is still running in the background requesting to be added to the startup list (WinPatrol) and to modify the registry (Spybot). It pops up about every 3-5 minutes. So far, no success with Uniblue Customer Support. I wish I had read these comments before trying it.

Hi Tom, this is Frank, Support Manager at Uniblue Systems. I can assure you that we do respond to ALL customer enquiries within 1 business day. I do not have your details to check into your support ticket, however if you submit your question from the link below I will personally get back to you shortly. Put “Tom PCMech” in the subject line.http://www.liutilities.com/support/ticket

Revo Uninstaller. Best program ever. And its free. I thank Brian in above thread who mentioned it on 9/4/2007 7:30 am. Revo is awesome and also worked on other troublesome programs. I can’t say enough good things about Revo. I can’t believe its free. At least last time I checked.

With this many people having the exact same problem, when will those in denial finally admit there is a problem? Eventually Uniblue will be forced to change its ways or they certainly won’t be selling many licenses for this software. Besides, are there really ANY good, trustworthy “Registry Cleaner” programs out there?

If I may, I’d like to respond to your question: “when will those in denial finally admit there is a problem?”

We addressed this issue a while back (above) :

“As mentioned above, we were aware of an issue with earlier versions prior to the release of version 2.0.1107.3564. The issue was if you tried uninstalling without first closing the program, the uninstall could have failed half way because some RegistryBooster files were in use by the system and could not be deleted. When this occurred, parts of RegistryBooster remained on the computer; however RegistryBooster would not be seen in the Add or Remove Programs list.”

“This wasn’t intentional, and this was caused by the fact that the software was running in the System Tray when the user tried to delete the program. This wasn’t clear to many users, and, once alerted, we acted on it immediately. In response, we developed a feature which closes the program automatically when the user starts to uninstall.”

We admitted that there was a problem with a previous build, and it was corrected a while ago – as soon as we were made aware of a problem.

We appreciate all feedback and take it all seriously. We constantly monitor for comment about our products and services, and all suggestions are communicated through internal channels.

I have finally removed it. More by luck than judgement I copied what to do from a poster above which didn’t work so in desperation I went to Add Remove programs and although I had tried it before it finally went. As far as I know it is no longer on my computer but I will get my Brother to check next time he is round. Good luck everyone else. You will need it.

Tom you have to now remove winpatrol as its in its memory
go via uninstall in control panel.
do a saerch and remove any bits.
Best to remove via safe mode.
Then go to run and type msconfig look for it there and remove.
then go back to RUN and type regedit and also check to see if there.
Need to restart after each action. Hours later you should be clean.

I recently purchased uniblue registry booster 2 and I am completely amazed at how much more performance I get. Upon first run of the program it found 800 registry errors and fixed them very quickly. Now my computer runs like it did when I first installed windows. I would recommend this program to anyone.

I installed it the other day and I cant remove all of it and the pop up… well there are 3 of them now wont go away

So come on Uniblue, admit the latest version is not so easily uninstallable

I am going to get a professional to sort it out because to be honest, I dont feel happy taking advise from Uniblue as they are still producing the software, saying the issue is fixed when it so obviously is not

I am not a power user but I do need a registry cleanup program that is affordable and easy to use. I have not tested other programs but I bought this program and it is easy enough for me to use. Most importantly, this program does make my windows run better, so for this kind of money and my time. I think this is a very small and wise investment

I was about to download the trial as I was sent an email praising it from Firetrust who I purchased “Mailwasher” from and what a great bit of kit that is, I have been running it for nearly 4 years now, fantastic.

However I run 2 PCs and 2 laptops with both digital stills imaging programs and video edit suites and all connected to the web, so daily cleansing is a must. The claims relating to this software seemed to fit exactly what I needed in one program, I currently run my machines with Regcure and Xoftspy.

I stopped just before allowing the trial to download and cancelled the import, and thought on checking it out with a few reviews. On reading the many reviews I am glad at this moment that I did, if the hoards of dissapointed customers are half way right in their claims then my business would have suffered a massive collapse, however if the software does do what it says on the tin and does not indeed take over the running of the machines in its own customer defined way then it would help me, but I cannot afford to try before I buy, I just cant take the risk.

If at some time I read from users/customers that this particular piece of kit is 100% stable, reliable, and does not impact with incursions onto other running software then I would be tempted, but sorry to say Uniblue, not this time.

You can read many reviews from both independent, professional reviewers and users who have tested and used the software over a long period, who are very happy. If you’d like more info, please drop me a line: hilaryr@uniblue.net

I purchased Uniblue. Sensational! MS Word, IExplorer, etc, are loading much faster than before. Boot up is much better as well. I just like it. I was close to replacing my Sony VAIO because it was slowing down. I wondered why that was always my experience before and I always had to buy a new one every three years. Running Uniblue Registry Booster in effect saved me money. What’s $20+ bucks? That’s just an ATM withdrawal from a Dave n Busters ATM machine (fee from them, fee from my bank). It’s an honest product, y’all. Go get it! A++

Its nonsense to say that its not a trick of course it is A TRICK, do you think we are daft.

INSTALLING THE TRIAL VERSION HAS MADE MY COMPUTER WORSE and I cant get it off.
The location of the software is hidden and as yet I havent worked out where it is — theres no need for this sort of malicious nonsense – they should be ashamed of themselves.

I ran the trial version, bought the program, and have been quite happy with everything that it does.

I’m a little disappointed to discover that apparently I have purchased only a one year licence for the program, but I’ll look at this in greater detail when it falls due again and re-evaluate any renewal option then.

In the meantime it works well and does what it claims. I couldn’t expect more that that.

Despite all the claims of fraud, malware, spyware, and others here, I saw the good review and saw the good comments and decided to give it a whirl. I must say, I am impressed with this software and it will be running on my computer forevermore!

Following an email from Nick Bolton of Firetrust I downloaded and installed a trial copy of Registry Booster.

Impressed with it I tried to purchase it and three times was told that the transaction could not be validated. This was despite trying with two different credit cards. I have now given up and uninstalled the trial copy – As far as I can tell it uninstalled properly – and you have a somewhatdisappointed potential customer. I am also concerned that I am not going to be charged three times on my credit cards for the aborted purchase attempts. Is it possible for you to confirm that no debits have been processed to my accounts.

Thanks for submitting your comments. I am sorry about the issues you encountered with your purchase. Unfortunately credit-card validation in our shopping cart is something that we do not have control over as this is provided by reliable, certified companies. If the purchase did not go through, then your credit card will not be billed. Feel free to submit a ticket to Uniblue’s Customter Support in order for us to be able to assist you personally – confirm that you were not billed as well help you place an order if you still want to benefit from using the full version of Registry Booster.

Franta said:8/20/2007 4:15 am
Make sure you close the RegistryBooster icon from the system tray (next to the System clock) by: Right-clicking on it and choose “Exit Registry Booster” before attempting to uninstall. Registry Booster is running in the background by default. Close it and uninstall from Add or Remove Programs – No Problem!

Yeah, right. I did this and the icon remained in the system tray. Regardless, I went into Control Panel and successfully removed the program.

While there are some idiots posting in this comment thread (obviously), there are too many valid complaints from people who know what they’re doing to make me trust this software.

In my opinion the folks at Uniblue are being too nice to some of you people, but then again they have to be — I don’t.

I don’t often take the time to give free advice, but I see so many people here being so badly misinformed but I can’t stay quiet.

Before I get into this, let me say that I have absolutely no relationship with Uniblue or, to the best of my knowledge, any company with which they may be related. At this point in time I have never communicated with anyone at Uniblue by any means.

Now, I think many of the complaints here are the result of a snowball effect: someone without a lot of experience reports a problem and other equally inexperienced people take preceding complaints as gospel and add theirs to the list. Some of the early complaints were obviously justified, as has been conceded by Uniblue.

Since Uniblue fixed the cause of the early problems by having the uninstall routine automatically stop the background process, I suspect that many of the subsequent complaints are the result of inappropriate user actions or compromised computers.

But let’s start with the complaint about “free scan”.

Look, Uniblue advertise a free scan, and that’s exactly what they give you — a free scan. They don’t advertise a free scan AND FIX, or that you can use their product for life without paying for it.

There are a lot of underhanded operators who offer a free scan for one thing or another (virus, spyware, etc) and then intentionally mis-report the results, making things sound much worse than they really are. Those people are liars, cheats and scumbags.

There is absolutely no evidence, or even a hint of a suggestion of evidence, that Uniblue’s free scan is anything other than a 100% legitimate.

You can run a scan and, without paying a single cent, you get to find out if Registry Booster has determined if there is anything about your Registry that should be actioned. You also, still without paying a single cent, get to restore 15 of the errors reported.

WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT? Should software developers be expected to work for free?

Quite reasonably, if you want to use the full features of the program, you register for a pittance of a price. If you don’t like it you can get a full refund.

On the other hand, if you are prepared to let a free, unsupported shareware application loose on your Registry then by all means go for it — and the best of British luck to you!

Now to the matter of uninstall problems, which I see are still being reported even since Uniblue’s modification to automatically shut down background processes.

Installation was commendably simple. Anyone who can’t install this program without problems either (a) doesn’t have the experience to be installing anything, or (b) has a seriously compromised computer.

The only anomaly I discovered was that, although I had requested both Desktop and Quick Launch icons during the installation, a Quick Launch icon was never installed. However I was able to drag the Desktop icon to the Quick Launch toolbar. This situation didn’t change over three successive reinstalls.

With the program installed and after running a scan, I went straight to testing the uninstall. I would suggest that Uniblue include an Uninstall entry on the Windows Start menu. The uninstall executable (unins000.exe) is already in the installation folder, so it’s just a matter of placing a link to it from the menu. That would be one less query for them to have to respond to for people who don’t know about Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs.

Running uninstall from the Windows Control Panel went without a hitch, but I needed to delve a little deeper to be sure.

I discovered that the installation folder under Program Files was completely removed, and that only four minor entries remained in the Registry. More correctly, there were two entries duplicated: two in the MUICache key under HKEY_USERS and again in the the MUICache key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. The MUICache simply holds a list of application names for programs that have been run. In the case of Uniblue Registry Booster the entries left behind were just confirmation that the program executable and the uninstall executable had been run. Leaving such entries behind after an uninstall is not at all unusual and a very minor oversight.

In other words, uninstall did everything it was supposed to do.

My instinct and experience tells me that many of you experiencing problems either installing, using or removing Uniblue Registry Booster are running computers that are in some way damaged or compromised. It’s a pretty safe guess because that applies to the majority of the computer using population — even though many never realize the fact.

If, for example, you enjoy a broadband connection and your computer isn’t at least sitting behind a NAT router, then you are a sitting duck and exposed to about a bazillion circulating threats. In fact if you’ve been online for more than about 12 minutes without adequate protection you have probably already been compromised.

Now, a few comments on specific complaints I’ve read above:

Complaint: Registry Booster didn’t speed up my computer.
Response: The main purpose of a Registry cleaner/optimizer is not to boost Windows start-up or application opening times. If you realize speed improvements, all well and good, that’s a plus. But the main benefit of a clean, defragmented and streamlined registry is a healthy computer. Any speed improvements are a bonus. There are many reasons for a significant slowdown in overall computer performance — multiple programs of the same type clashing with one another, badly designed programs (shareware is often a culprit), and the #1 cause, malware. Any of those can also be the cause of frequent crashes, and none of them are anything that a Registry cleaner can remedy.

Complaint: Registry Booster runs every time I start my computer.
Remedy: Well tell it not to! The settings are right there under… wait for it… the “Settings” tab. The #1 failure of novice computer users is not looking around to see what options are available. #2 is not using an application’s Help feature to search for something you want more information on.

Complaint: This has messed up my computer…
Comment: Rubbish! What it’s done is reveal all the problems that you’ve had all along. Your computer is compromised, and probably has been for ages, because you have never taken the slightest interest in security. Even so, had you taken a Registry backup before running Registry Booster you could easily restore your computer to the state it was in beforehand.

Topic: Manually editing the registry.
Comment: There are several instances of people who clearly have very limited experience, following the advice of others to manually edit the Registry. YOU ARE FLIRTING WITH EXTREME DANGER. Registry editing isn’t something you need a PhD for, but at the same time no sane, responsible expert would ever recommend it as a task to be tackled by novices.

Complaint: Uniblue doesn’t answer my e-mail.
Comment: I don’t yet know from personal experience just how responsive Uniblue is to support requests, but going by their responses here I’d be very surprised if they ignore e-mail. Their responses here have all been timely and reasonable — extremely reasonable considering some of the idiotic claims they have had to deal with. In a couple of instances where Uniblue has suggested their answering e-mail may have been blocked by a spam filter, the response has been “I don’t run a spam filter”. That’s not the point. An e-mail can be trapped and filtered out anywhere between the sender and the receiver. And further, if Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail or several others are involved, they are e-mail traps themselves. Yahoo in particular has a dreadful record of undelivered mail. If you insist on using a free e-mail service, use Google Gmail. So far they’ve proven to be very reliable.

DISCLAIMER: At this time nothing in this post should be taken as an endorsement of Uniblue Registry Booster.

I haven’t spent enough time with it yet to take that step. A lot of people listen to what I say, so I have to be extremely cautious with my recommendations. However at this point I have found nothing that would prompt me to recommend against it, and it certainly looks promising.

If all continues to go as well as it has so far, Registry Booster will be replacing my current Registry cleaner. It’s certainly cheaper, faster and simpler to install, configure and use — all factors that I consider before recommending an application to my customers, members and readers.

Lesley said:
“While there are some idiots posting in this comment thread (obviously), there are too many valid complaints from people who know what they’re doing to make me trust this software.”

I don’t think that’s been shown to be a valid conclusion.

Apart from early complaints about the uninstall process, which were acknowledged by Uniblue and subsequently fixed, I’m afraid I don’t at all see many messages from knockers that contain any indication that they “know what they’re doing” to any extent that is relevant.

In this context there are two aspects to “experience” :

(1) Extensive experience with day-to-day computing, or in some particular field or application;
(2) Experience with the under-the-covers workings of an Operating System.

In this discussion (1) is irrelevant. You could know more about Web design or Excel spreadsheets or accounting software than anyone else on the planet, and still be wide open to all sorts of threats and problems. Many of my clients, members and readers are experts in some particular computing field, yet come to me seeking answers to various operational problems. Even “experienced” people can take inappropriate action or fail to take appropriate action.

Anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with how Windows works should be aware that editing the registry is a potentially dangerous operation. Registry optimizing software is specifically designed to edit the Registry, so it is axiomatic that there is a certain risk associated with the use of any Registry optimizing software.

The biggest risk by far is to systems that are compromised in some way — a damaged software installation, badly designed software, and above all malware incursion.

Clearly Uniblue acknowledges that attempting to correct Registry problems can, under certain circumstances, create even more problems. That’s why they provide a Registry backup feature, and if you don’t use it before running a scan then you are playing Russian roulette with your system.

An experienced person coming to this software (or anything similar) for the first time, and wishing to trial it, wouldn’t even trust the built-in Registry backup. After all, at first meeting it is an unknown quantity. If they really “know what they’re doing”, and if they really understand the importance and sensitivity of the Registry, they’ll take their own backup steps as well.

Those measures could (should) be to (a) export the registry to a file, and (b) create a System Restore Point. In fact I take it one step further and copy the exported Registry file to another computer on my network. If you don’t have any networked computers then burning the Registry backup to a CD amounts to the same safeguard.

Once the software proves reliable those extra steps may no longer be necessary, but you would ALWAYS use the Registry Booster built-in backup feature before running a scan.

As a matter of interest I did a binary comparison of the that backup file produced by Registry Booster, with the file produced by a Registry export. While there were a number of minor differences I don’t think these were of any significance — registry entries can change very quickly, and probably did so between the taking of the two copies. The file sizes were identical.

None of that will prevent problems from occurring under certain circumstances if your system is severely compromised. But it will allow you to recover to your pre-Registry-fix, albeit still compromised, state.

Registry Booster prompts you to reboot your system after it has finished its fix process. Don’t ignore that advice, but I’d add one more suggestion: Close all applications and reboot BEFORE running Registry Booster, then close any applications that are configured to start automatically with Windows, and then run Registry Booster.

Performing any major tasks, including the installation of software, should always be preceded by a reboot, whether the software suggests it or not — you’ll benefit in the long run. This is a safety step far too often overlooked by novices and ignored by people who should know better.

So with all that you might be thinking that Registry cleaning is just too much trouble. It’s not! A good Registry cleaner should be part of every computer user’s maintenance toolkit, and should be run regularly.

I’m now fairly confident that Uniblue’s Registry Booster will become my registry optimizer of choice.

So, Uniblue is being “too nice to us” for causing us these troubles eh? How utterly condescending of you. What makes you think it’s not the other way around?

Smells of a paid hack here at worst or a goof-ball huckster huckster at best who conveniently appears to be touting his own high-pressure sales “BUY MY PRODUCT NOW OR THE SKY IS FALLING!” website by use of this forum.

Sounds to me like Bill just endorsed Uniblue’s Registry Booster; “I’m now fairly confident that Uniblue’s Registry Booster (URB) will become my registry optimizer of choice.”

Everyone just keep that product-plug in mind when you start having problems. Just be prepared for him to tell you he doesn’t have to be nice to you, and that you either don’t know what you are doing or your system is “compromised”.

Between his two posts he uses the word “compromised” no less than eight times. That sales pitch has become part of your everyday jargon eh? So everyone is “compromised” eh? What about integrity? That “compromised” too?

So, you don’t have to be nice to us eh? Scratch us and possibly thousands off your list of potential customers. Nobody likes a snot-nosed know-it-all, a supposed one anyway. Your attitude is real confidence- inspiring as a person one would want to do business with, I’m sure.

So, you advise the use of “two firewall’s” eh? Gee, what would that be? Anyone? Anyone? Perhaps a good hardware firewall and a good software firewall? In 2008 there are likely only a handful of “experts” in the world such as yourself who know that. Thanks for offering to let us know.

Gee, you mean someone can connect a hardware keystroke logger to your system? WOW! Didn’t know that! Not.
So we should all be using an NAT router at a minimum eh? No S**t Sherlock. You must be one of the few people in the world who knows that kind of basic stuff.

Fact is that many people across the globe have experienced troublesome issues with the program under discussion. How utterly condescending of you to imply all these people are clueless and don’t know what they are doing. Yeah, How to Win Friends and Influence People – not.

Oh, and to assume everyone who is having trouble is either an idiot or their system is “compromised” is asinine. I’ll stack my system security up against yours any day.

Should have listened to your initial gut instinct not to inject yourself into the argument of others. You ever run across a pompous ass? Everyone know the type? Guess how you come across to people.

I am the Support Manager at Uniblue and would be very interested in which particular issue you are currently facing with Registry Booster. As we have posted many times before, we are aware of a past minor issue (when users tried to uninstall without closing Registry Booster from the system tray) which has been tackled immediately quite some time ago. If you are using Registry Booster and still encountering problems we ask you to contact us immediately so we can take appropriate action. Our tag-line is “Software made easy” and User-Experience is of top priority for us. That is the reason why Uniblue is active in this and other 3rd party forums, to learn from user-feedback and continue to enhance our software. We value all constructive feedback.

About 4 years ago I started a little business from home doing typing and secretarial work because I was a lone mom and I couldn’t go out to work. I had been using computers since school so I wasn’t a real newbie or so I thought. Anyway without going into all the details I got into a real mess. An ex was hacking into my computer and I had all sorts of viruses and other bad stuff. The programs I used for my work wouldn’t work properly and even when I reinstalled them there was still a lot of problems.

Anyway I rang a computer expert from the yellow pages and I couldn’t afford even one hour of his time, and he said it sounds like it would take him a few hours to fix everything. A couple of friends who were good with computers didn’t have any success either.

That’s when I found Bill Hely on the Web and I can say from my own experience that what you are saying about him is totally untrue. I bought his hackers nightmare book and it helped me to understand a lot, but my PC was so bad that I still couldn’t get it exactly right so I sent him an e-mail, not really expecting anything but just hoping.

One of his staff replied to me at first but I still wasn’t getting anywhere, then Bill took over and to this day I still can’t believe how much time and patience he gave until everything was right. And he didn’t ask for one cent extra. I now know that’s just the sort of service he gives to his customers.

For anything to do with my computer his book is my Bible and his newsletter is my Sermon every week. Since then I’ve followed many of his suggestions and I’ve never been let down. As far as I’m concerned if Bill says I should do something to do with my PC then I do it, and I know if there will be a problem he will be right there to help me.

I wonder how many of the people who are putting him down know anything about him at all or have ever helped as many people as he has.

Maybe you should just forget your egos for a while and start listening. You might learn something.

Hey Rosie, no one cares about your sob story attempt to elicit sympathy. Your routine about being a “lone mom” and all is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. What does it have to do with anything? Why not just say “small business owner” and leave it at that? Are you supposed to get more sympathy and deference because of your personal situation? Its pure pandering and not relevant.

The guy just insulted a whole forum of people, and basically threw out a challenge to the world proclaiming in a most ARROGANT and EGOTISTICAL manner that he “doesn’t have to be nice” to the other forum participants. It’s a two-way street and no one gets a pass. His attempt at cyber-bullying has backfired and now he has become the subject of discussion. Brilliant.

Is that type of rudeness normal social discourse? Maybe in Australia, but not the rest of the world. Great way to represent your nation Bill. Smart fella.

Open mouth – insert foot. This is a classic case study.

Bill came in late on the thread and perhaps Uniblue has fixed the problems previously discussed. Bill could learn a thing or two from Uni-Blue, specifically about dealing with the public. No one can say that Uni-Blue doesn’t handle these problems with professional courtesy and grace, at least in this forum. In fact Hillary has been impressive and exemplary in handling the public considering the amount of heat they have taken. She’s very good at it and is already doing a lot to change perceptions if she keeps it up.

So, people who walk around acting like Bill should just get a pass from the public, that what you are saying?

I don’t give a whit who you are be it Bill Haly or Bill Gates, you don’t go around acting like that without pissing people off. The only people I have seen make childish public comments like Bill’s assertion – are children.

Let’s see, someone walks into a room of people and says “I am so freakin great, I don’t have to be nice to anyone here, everyone bow down to me”. Guess what the reaction is gonna be? There couldn’t be an easier way to develop an instant reputation as a jerk, than to act in the manner Bill did when he injected himself into the forum. His attitude comes across as self-centered, arrogant, condescending and immature.

Your double standards and bias are duly noted and rejected. Take a hike Rosie, try selling it elsewhere. This forum, which used to be about Uni-Blue, is now about Bill. Funny how these things work and is a lesson to all.

Honestly some people are unbelievable. A guy who appears to know what he’s talking about gives some good advice and all you 2 can do is turn nasty.

Some of us are interested in learning things that will help us so I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be grateful if you 2 would either contribute something useful or butt out. Seems like wherever we go these days there’s noisy rude juveniles spoiling it for everyone else.

And yes Michelle I saw your nasty attack on Rosie before the webmaster deleted it. Its almost a pity it didn’t stay visible because tho it was nasty and petty it said a lot more about your nasty character than about the people you were attacking.

If Bill Helly is still around I’d like to say thank you. I installed the registry booster trial following your suggestions and everything went just fine.

The only thing that’s backfired Michelle is your ignorant and unjustified attack on a professional who was providing useful information free of charge to anyone who had enough common sense to use it.

You’d have to be an ignoramus not to realize that Bill was saying that Uniblue was answering some pretty stupid complaints and accusations and recommendations with excessive politeness. From a business point of view they have to do that because they’re treating everybody as a potential customer. But Bill was prepared to tell it straight and correct some of the stupid comments being tossed around.

That’s how I took his comments anyway and I think any reasonable person would have taken it the same way. After all you’re the only one babbling on rabidly about a complete irrelevance and treating others with contempt.

You claim that he insulted a whole forum of people. The only people that should feel insulted are the idiots who got corrected. The truth is he provided information to HELP a whole forum of people, and you have provided nothing but bile.

I’m an IT professional also, and I didn’t come in late as you put it. I’ve been watching this circus since the beginning and had no intention of getting involved. But I’m speaking up now because Sandy is right about rude juveniles being everywhere. All us adults are tired of seeing people like you and FackersBiteMare stuffing up forums and blog comments where others are genuinely trying to help and be helped. And I should add that it’s very easy for a real professional to spot a fake “expert” like FackersBiteMare is trying to come across as.

It’s obvious to me that neither of you know what you’re talking about, and I’m happy for you to continue in your ignorance. But it’s a problem if anyone else might believe your rubbish.

I’ve tested Registry Booster on a Windows XP Pro PC with Service Pack 3 that I use for testing and had no problems at all. I’ve also tested it in ways that wouldn’t make any sense to you and the results were fine. I wouldn’t have any worries with using it on my main PC and laptop and I probably will.

I’ll be brief. I’m a business owner. I’m not an IT pro, but I’ve been in a business which relies heavily on good IT systems and support for longer than most (and, I’m certain, longer than some on this list have been alive). I’ve long used “The Hacker’s Nightmare” as my security resource and Bill Hely’s direct assistance when needed. His advice has always been practical, down-to-earth, well researched and, most importantly for any business, accurate and useful. I personally found his cogent, direct and no-nonsense postings (above) refreshing as always.

Gheeez I started at top and found nothing but issues other than how the program actually worked on the registry. I have tried almost every reg cleaner out since the early 80’s including the utility suite mentioned above which stuck its apps everywhere to start with windows and run resident which is more junk to slow the system down. Does Registry booster put anything in any run string in registry startup? Does any part of the probram run resident? does it give you option to go in to registry items it selects to look selection at a time to decide whether to keep or not? anyone Love this program for what its supposed to do? How is it against the others like reg cure, etc. Thanks very much.

Hi Shreddi,
In answer to your technical queries about RegistryBooster: Registry Booster has an option to “Start up with Windows” which can be easily disabled from the “Settings” tab.
Once a registry scan is complete, RB will display a list of invalid registry entries and the end-user has the option to selected/de-select all or individual registry entries.
If you have any other queries, or you would like to see other independent reviews, please contact me:hilaryr@uniblue.net

Uniblue,
I was having difficulty with my xp system when I
stumbled along the registybooster-2 program.
It told me I had 522 problems and that it would only fix 15.
Then it directs me to buy the full version to fix it.
I was very nervous about this being a scam so I decided to do some review searching.
I have to say that I have spent a good hour reading the comments listed here and can in no way trust giving out my credit card number out to buy this software. It sounds great and it may even work great but when there is this much drama surrounding it I would rather wipe my hard drive and start all over.
It would be less of a hassle I think and at least I can sleep at night knowing my personal info. is safe.
How am I to really know if the program even is telling the truth about the registry errors? Ok I know Im having trouble so I download a supposedly free program to help me and it starts trying to sell it to me if I want the help. Sounds like any programer worth his salt can whip up a program to do a scan and ask for money. Thanks uniblue but no thanks.
You should rethink your marketing strategy if you want to sell this product.
Look at microsoft. They sell some of the crapiest stuff on the planet but at least you know your getting taken up front.
Lee

There are many independent reviews on RegistryBooster available – if you require links to any, please contact me directly hilaryr@uniblue.net

I can assure readers and customers that personal info is safe. We DO NOT give out our customers’ details to any 3rd party. Our e-commerce provider who handles all financial transaction information, operates a strict security policy, which includes the following:
Orders processed using SSL v2/v3 and TLS v1 traffic encryption.
Hash seeding and encryption algorithms exceed known security standards.
Multiple segregated networks and highly restrictive configured firewalls and routers.
Systems consistently updated with latest patches and known software updates.
Highly restricted access to physical servers and 24/7 video surveillance.
Limited access to customer information; all activity is logged and monitored. If you require any more info about this, please contact me and I would be happy to explain further.

The software trial is marketed as a free diagnostic scan, not total freeware.

“we do not ‘trick’ our users in any way. We offer an evaluation version of our software as a ‘free scan’” Yes you do , registry is just settings, no performance left here by microsoft. Your wensite il identical with outher websites of spiware.

RegistryBooster is registry cleaning software for users who do not want to clear redundant registry entries manually. We implore users of the software to take a back-up before running any fixes, as a safeguard.

Can you please let me know examples of identical websites to ours’? If that’s the case, then we will be investigating these sites thoroughly for breach of copyright.

Also, if we were a company promoting malware, I wouldn’t be posting openly from Uniblue, in the public domain. If you have any further questions, please get in touch: hilaryr@uniblue.net

Lee, if you are willing to be helped there are people here who are willing to try to give you the help you need.

You say you know you have problems, and that’s probably a reasonable assessment. You also say you want to clean up your registry, so I’m curious… which registry scanner are you going to use?

It’s quite acceptable for you to be nervous about the possibility of being scammed into using inappropriate software from a publisher you are not familiar with.

But that’s where research comes in. It’s not smart to avoid a company just because you’ve never heard of it, as there are a great many companies you’ve never heard of whose products are far superior to their big-name competitors. For example, there are several publishers whose products are way ahead of any of those produced by the two biggest names in the malware industry: McAfee and Norton/Symantec.

If you properly research a company and/or its product, and make a considered decision based on available facts, you will rarely go wrong. For example, in the case of Uniblue, you might realise that rip-off, fly-by-night operators don’t get to be Microsoft Gold Partners. Nor do they get the range of reviews and awards that you could have found yourself listed on the liutilities.com website. How do you know those awards are genuine? Same answer — research. It’s fairly easy to backtrack and verify legitimacy.

It’s unfortunate for companies like Uniblue that there really are scam operators who will offer to scan your system for problems, report a load of bull****, and offer to “fix” it all for you if you send them some money for their crap software. But these scammers are very easy to identify if you do your research.

It most definitely does not mean that every company that offers you a free scan is out to rip you off.

As to your comment about all the “drama” in this thread, there have really only been two types of complaints. Uniblue openly acknowledged that some of the early complaints were justified, and they made the necessary changes to address those problems. That some people chose to continue to harp on about those early problems long after they were fixed is, to put it kindly, unreasonable and pointless.

Most of the other complaints seem to hinge around the fact that Uniblue has chosen to be a for-profit business, instead of being a charity. Why on earth so many people think that a free scan should automatically mean a free fix is beyond me. It costs a lot of money to develop software on a commercial basis, and no developer in their right mind is then going to just turn around and give it away.

I know of some fairly good registry scanners/cleaners besides Uniblue’s Registry Booster, and I’ve tested a lot of both free and commercial packages. While I acknowledge there is a lot of good free software around, I’ve never encountered a free registry scanner that I would trust any of my systems to.

Another thing I’m curious about, as a business operator myself: Exactly how do you suggest that Uniblue should “rethink their marketing strategy”? Seems to me that they either don’t offer a free scan or they do offer a free scan — and either way they’ll provoke the ire of critics. If you’re suggesting that they should provide both the first scan and the first fix for free, I’d have to respond with question: “How does that prove that the scan or the fix are legitimate?”

You’re also in error in thinking that a registry scanner is just a one-off fix to save you having to reformat/reinstall Windows. The likelihood of your having operating system problems is considerably reduced if you use a good scanner to optimise the registry on a regular basis.

Determining what applications and software tools are most suitable for specific circumstances is a large part of my professional life. I can’t afford to take unnecessary risks because my recommendations are adopted by other businesses, so we do a lot of testing in-house before recommending new products. I’ve tested Uniblue’s Registry Booster across a range of computer types and operating systems over a two-month period. It is now our in-house registry optimiser of choice and used by most of our clients, completely without any problems whatsoever.

I’m not going to claim that Registry Booster does a better job of Registry optimisation than any other product. From a purely scan-and-fix perspective I was quite happy with the scanner we had used and recommended beforehand. However Registry Booster does at least as good a job, faster, with a lot less fuss, less user interaction required, easier configuration, and with an excellent user interface. My conclusion is that it’s an excellent product that is well supported by a publisher with a responsive and customer centric attitude.

And yes, I agree, there’s no reason you should listen to me in preference to any of the knockers. However I’m not venturing an uninformed opinion from behind the protection of an anonymous screen name. I’m “out there” to be checked on and I stand behind my statements and opinions.

If you’re having some problem with Registry Booster, post the full details clearly and I’m sure you’ll get all the help you need.

i don’t understand why you (uniblue) feel the need to constantly make sure everyone knows you’re not trying to trick them, if you really weren’t you wouldn’t be saying that would you?
i’m wondering why i went to neuber.com (which recommended your software) and yet i was directed to a free-fonts website in order to download it.

The major problem marketting a product like this is that the internet seems to be saturated with ‘registry cleaners’ most of which being the same old fraudulent russian software with different looking interfaces, how does your average user know what they should be downloading and what is just absolute bs.

Your average user isn’t going to chitchat to his friends about registry cleaners, not over the net, not face to face, not ever.

So i dare say it, but other than the people who accidentily stumble accross your AMAZING FREE SHIT ad on the net really dont require a registry scanner. you wouldn’t give a spanner to an idiot and let them work on their car, even if you showed them which bolts to tighten.

p5yk3r, I actually did a search for registry cleaners because I thought my computer needed one. Found out I had over 300, and was disappointed that I could only fix 15. But, now I have a choice to make. Either buy it or don’t – but at least I could see if it worked and how I liked the interface. Alot more info then if I just bought it off the shelf. I actually found similar setups on other top registry cleaner web sites. I think all of them should be more clear to be honest, but I sure don’t find uniblue to be the scammers that everyone is going on about here. As someone else said, just research.

There are a few different possible causes for a problem with Wlanapi.dll. Let’s look at the most common one…

Windows XP-SP3 installs a Dynamic Link Library file called Wlanapi.dll. The same thing happens if Microsoft’s KB918997 is applied to an XP-SP2 system.

However there is also a Wlanapi.dll file installed by the configuration software for some wireless NICs. A lot of the people complaining about this problem seem to be running D-Link equipment, though I suspect it’s probably more aligned with a particular chipset, meaning that any manufacturer who users that chipset may be similarly affected, but that’s a guess.

So what happens is that XP-SP3 (or KB918997) overwrites an existing file, and although both versions of the file have the same name they have different entry points, resulting in an error message something like: “The procedure entry point apsSearchInterface could not be located in the dynamic link library wlanapi.dll”.

The fix is fairly simple, but here’s my question:

Why on earth would you expect a Registry Scanner to know which file is which, and to be able to make the necessary corrections?

Like using a screwdriver to hammer in nails, wrong tool for the job — leading, inevitably,to the wrong conclusion about the tool’s usefulness.

It’s not unreasonable that you might not know those details, or even that you might hope that a Registry Cleaner could do the job for you. But what happened next? Did you then contact Uniblue support, or did you just go off half cocked and start spreading misinformation? As if there hasn’t been enough of that already in this thread.

Hey Bill, you’ve had some really intelligent and helpful posts here. Thank you. You ask a brilliant metaphorical question above “Why on earth would you expect a Registry Scanner to know which file is which, and to be able to make the necessary corrections?”
The reason is simple: Uniblue would like you to think it would. On their download site they say, “Remove errors immediately and reduce system conflicts”

This is not a qualified statement (e.g., remove some errors), it is a hand reaching out to the distressed. They think it is a helping hand, and it is. Only the hand is helping itself to our pocket books.

Can you tell me what errors the program can remove? You mention an error related to wlanapi.dll. Do you think Registry Booster can remove that error? The site implies it can. I took them at their word (I was a drowning man grasping at straws). I didn’t bother to call Registry Booster’s support because on mature reflection, I realized that no registry cleaner can divine the solution.

Incidentally, I did email Uniblue support asking why it didn’t remove the error (I was also a bit sarcastic). They didn’t respond.

> On their download site they say, “Remove errors
> immediately and reduce system conflicts”
>
> This is not a qualified statement (e.g., remove some
> errors), a helping hand, and it is. Only the hand is
> helping itself to our pocket books.

Frankly I don’t know how you can read something like “Remove errors immediately” and interpret that as “Remove *ALL* errors immediately”.

And incidentally, that software will only attempt to repair seven errors, as opposed to 15 for RegistryBooster.

> Can you tell me what errors the program can remove?

In my experience, most GENUINE REGISTRY ERRORS on reasonably intact systems that aren’t significantly compromised by malware or major corruption.

> You mention an error related to wlanapi.dll. Do you think
> Registry Booster can remove that error?

No it can’t, because as I explained it’s not a “Registry error”.

> The site implies it can. I took them at their word
> (I was a drowning man grasping at straws).

Where is it claimed that RegistryBooster can “fix” a file that is the incorrect version for the requirements of a particular unrelated application?

> I didn’t bother to call Registry Booster’s support
> because on mature reflection, I realized that no
> registry cleaner can divine the solution.

Correct, but for the reason I just gave.

> Incidentally, I did email Uniblue support asking why
> it didn’t remove the error (I was also a bit sarcastic).
> They didn’t respond.

In other words, you did your best to give them reason not to reply to a challenge which you now know was an unreasonable expectation to start with. I suggest you read my “egg on face” article here: http://ComputerAndOnlineSecurity.com

Bill, Your defense of Uniblue is tireless. They don’t deserve you. You cannot argue with perceptions. Uniblue understands the perceptions of its site visitors. They know exactly what they expect. They are looking for miracles and Uniblue doesn’t mind taking the sucker’s money. If you ever tire of your present work, you should consider the spin business. You are a natural.
Tomas

Ha ha ha ROTFLLMGO. If you’re going to avoid products because of spelling mistakes you’re going to miss out a lot of good software.

I’m a programmer for a big name company that you would certainly have heard of. One of the reasons that big deals like us have such perfect websites is because they spend a lot more money on marketing, web design, professional writers and proof readers than they do on actual product development. That’s why operations like Nortons and McAfee sell crappy products from such polished websites. One of our competitors employs 32 writers and proof readers and 18 developers. Tell you something?

If a website or a piece of software is full of spelling mistakes, typos and poor syntax it could be an indication of many things, including the fact that it might be translated from another language. It also might be a small company made up of brilliant developers who can’t spell very well and the company isn’t big enough yet to employ all those writers and proof readers.

If I spot the occasional typo on a developers site I generally drop them a line and let them know about it. But then, that’s just me, I don’t go for the “princess” attitude. If the only problem you can find is a typo then either tell them about it or keep it to yourself. Making out like it’s a big deal just makes you look petty.

I was reviewing my startup list and found the UniBlue registry is still listed and operating even thoug I uninstalled it a week after installing it. I didn’t know what it was and found your website. But your website says that they fixed this problem years ago. Well I beg to differ. I installed and uninstalled this in 2008, but there it is in my startup sucking up power and running and doing god knows what after it was supposed to have removed itself. AND far after they swore to you it did not do this anymore. Personally, I see programs like this that install sereptitious programs and popup advertising as just sjort of a virus and the companies need to be shut down and put out of business.

I started reading all the comments; but after 1/2 hour I’d made little progress; so excuse me if this is already covered:

I used to use Uniblue Registry Cleaning whatsit in 2005/6 as a paid subscriber. Yes it worked and yes I liked it. Somehow I started using PC Pitstop Optimize after that, and moved on up to 2.0 when it came out. I still use it now and it’s just as good as Uniblue.

Having been a paid subscriber to Uniblue I can safely recommend it from a personal point of view. The reason why I now use and have stuck with Optimize 2.0 is that I personally prefer the GUI. Other than that I have no preference; and have had no bad experiences with Uniblue’s product.

I suspected I had potential registry issues and found Registry Booster 2 recommended by several reputable sources. As a part of my due diligence tracking down reviews, I spent an hour reading all the posts contained here. I’m not related to this company or anyone posting on this board. Once I distilled the ‘on topic’ messages and discarded the flamers, unfounded scam allegations, “victims who were tricked” and those who seemingly cannot read or follow common sense, I decided to purchase and use the product. It works as advertised and has made a distinct improvement in my system.

Yes, I too wish they were clearer regarding the following: 1) purchase required to fix. We all should know there’s no free lunch and I don’t expect them to give away their service, but it’s no fun to find out late in the process.
2) there’s an annual renewal. That term/condition might be buried in the license agreement, but I found it on the purchase confirmation page where you can opt out.

Bottom line my system is better for having used the product and it was worth the $29.95 I paid.

I’m entering into conversation with users and trying to help. Sorry if this seems defensive and guilty – but as a company, we do engage with our customers. If Frank and I didn’t respond to comments here, we would be accused of not being interested in helping our users.

What do you think of Registry Booster? I’d be interested to hear your feedback.

The backup is automatically done by RegistryBooster. Prior to performing any fixes it will request a confirmation from the user if he/she wants to perform the backup or not. RegistryBooster will perform two backups. One includes the whole registry and another one includes just the entries that will be changed in the registry.

The product of SpeedUpMyPC 2009 Can’t be downloaded because the installation package is SpeedUpMyPC 3, not the SpeedUpMyPC 2009 . Also the The product of SpeedUpMyPC 2009 always be found that “Download of installation data from the web has failed” after it was downloaded completely!! Don’t you think that your websites has a lot of mistakes?? I hope that you can fix all the mistakes as soon as possible, so I can use the products of SpeedUpMyPC 2009 happily!!

Hi. I have scaned n cleaned registry using uniblue but after that i cudn’t get internet access. not even to google. so i restored to my earlier registry settings n i can get online again. This software i believe is really great but i wud like to know why this has happened and how to correct it after registry cleaning. Thanks in advance.

This is not a known issue, but could be the combined result of third party software installed on your machine which writes to the registry in non-standard formats. In order to get your problem troubleshooted, kindly contact Uniblue Support at:http://www.uniblue.com/support/ticket

One of the problems with discussing specific items of malware is that every man and his dog has their own name for what is basically the same thing. For what is commonly referred to as “Win32 Rootkit” I quickly found a dozen Alternative names.

Unfortunately there’s been so much misinformation spread about exactly what Rootkits are that many people view them as a terminal, destructive and non-recoverable form of malware. This is incorrect.

It may be helpful to View a rootkit as a container, which in turn can contain other software. Of course that software hidden within the rootkit may be malware, but it may also be legitimate code. Rootkits are often used in association with Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies.

The “Win32 Rootkit” malware referred to above is one that is actually fairly easy to remove, without resorting to anything as drastic as a complete wipe and reinstall of Windows. Other infection types are much more difficult to eliminate, but the better anti-virus packages are getting very good at this and can handle most common rootkit-based malware.

But it’s important to understand that there is no single anti-malware solution that will answer all situations. The key is to know what to use and when.

Uniblue Registry Booster should not be considered as first and foremost a malware solution. Its primary function is as a Registry optimizer. Fortunately an intelligent registry optimizer like this can also remedy certain corruptions, but Registry optimization alone is a worthy goal and regular optimization certainly has benefits.

In the case of a badly corrupted Registry — a situation that several disgruntled posters to this thread have clearly been in without knowing it — there is probably little that any remedial software can do to straighten everything out. Anyone who understands exactly what the Windows Registry contains would understand and accept that no program could possibly know enough about all possible software installations and the myriad other configuration entries so as to be able to “uncorrupt” a badly mangled Registry.

That’s when you are left with two options:
– Scrub and reinstall Windows (and everything else) from scratch, OR…
– Call in a competent professional

About a year or so ago WinZip offered Registry Booster 2 as a free download. I grabbed it and for the first nine months seemed to do a good job cleaning the Registry. Then it found more errors and fixed very few. I decided to buy the new Power Suite but again it finds hundreds of errors, mostly DLL, but it fixes very few. Today it found 311 errors and fixed 16. This was my second scan; the previous one found 298 errors and fixed three or so. By the way each scan took over eight hours to run.

Last Thursday I sent an E-mail to Uniblue support and today is Wednesday and they haven’t answered.

Should I uninstall the old registry scanner?
How do I keep the power suite from opening when I boot the computer?
If it can’t make registry repairs shouldn’t I get my money back?

I have Uniblue SpyEraser running on my XP box and XP laptop. And Registry Booster on my Vista box and XP laptop. I honestly thought with the reasonable download software price, well…, I was not expecting much. Since the 1 year download the Uniblue software has been running perfectly and Uniblue customer support is very professional and helpful. Had to reinstall a couple of times due to system upgrades. The software interface is very easy to use, and I never had a problem with a trial verison of Uniblue. Could not be happier with the SpyEraser and Registry Booster.

NOT FREE Scan. Repeating many of the above comments. Uniblue’s Registry Booster “Free Scan” is a scam.
Don’t deny it.

The assumption of EVERY person who clicks on this trial is that it will do an online version of what you can expect from the program if you purchase it – much like many virus program offerings. But no. You get the scan which typically will reveal hundreds of (usually harmless) errors and then offers to fix 15. Realising you’ve been scammed, you then have the problem of uninstalling. Good luck !

Bit like offering a free trip from A to B but once you’ve climbed on the bus and got to the outskirts of town you find you have to pay to go any further or you’ve got to find your own way back home.

What a con. Better no free offer or a genuine free “Full” one off trial than losing your customer’s faith forever.

What semantic nonsense! I also tried the trial and got exactly what I expected: a SCAN and a report.

Such comments only expose the limits of your vocabulary. Do you not understand the meaning of the word “scan”.

Scanning anything, whether it be a file, a hardcopy document or the horizon, means to ASSESS the object being scanned. It doesn’t mean “to change the state of”. Why is it that so many people see only what they WANT TO SEE instead of what is actually there, written in black and white.

The formal definition and common usage of the word “scan” are perfectly clear, as is illustrated here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scan. There is nothing in the definition that even remotely alludes to “assess and change”.

Deceptive advertising should always be exposed, but complaints like this are the result of the readers deceiving themselves with their own wishful thinking, always looking to get something for free out of other people’s work.

I installed Registry Booster (I think around Dec ’06). The “free 15 fix” limit made me chuckle and grimace. I looked at all the problems it found. I recognized a few, so I was pretty sure they weren’t “made-up” to get me to buy the software. All the issues it found were AFTER I’d run Spybot and AdAware (different processes, I know) so I figured it was a good investment. And let’s be honest here, you may not like the 15 free fix limit on the free end, but it’s a legitimate, effective business tactic.

Anyway, two years on and I’m VERY happy to have this safe, easy, QUICK program as a complement to the other two above (as well as Malwarebytes, from Malwarebytes.org). All these have kept my systems running GREAT and pulled my keister out of the fire two or three times. I’ve dabbled in everything since the web was new, above average – yes. Expert, no. Just a Realtor in Charlotte.

I stumbled on this forum checking for an update. Another indicator of legitimacy is the number of patient responses the company is making to anyone here with “issues”.

Numerous heated attacks make me wonder instead if there isn’t some “competitor” orbiting this thread trying to dampen Uniblue’s sales. And maybe Uniblue is above making that assertion.

“Numerous heated attacks make me wonder instead if there isn’t some “competitor” orbiting this thread trying to dampen Uniblue’s sales,”

I doubt it. I doubt any competitor cares about Registry Booster one way or the other.

Competitors wouldn’t waste their time on an obscure thread somewhere. They would spend it developing something better.

I think the “heat” is just from your average PO’d people who tried it and had problems with it. Ever consider that maybe its just that simple?

Its like that with any product from cars to refrigerators and clothes washers to software or name your favorite crappy PC brand that you love to hate. You name it and you will find people who had an issue with it.

But there seems to some unusually defensive people surrounding this product… makes one wonder if the reverse of your assertion isn’t true…

The “heated attacks” on this thread are no different than any controversial software thread found scattered across the net. Those vigorously plugging the program are no more legitimate than those criticizing it.

Everyone is free to try a program or utility and come to their own conclusion about it. Because the conclusion by some is negative, it doesn’t mean there is some big “competitor” conspiracy.

You will never stop opinions or reviews on the net, and everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone has a brand they like and brands they dislike.

“Competitors wouldn’t waste their time…”
Oh but they do. To cite just one example: ozone generators (now THAT’S obscure). Couldn’t believe the dirty tricks I was seeing on their websites and in the forums. This thread reminded me of that from 2 yrs ago.

“…on an obscure thread somewhere…”
Took me seconds to find it in Google. And the guy has some good info on his blog.

“But there seems to some unusually defensive people surrounding this product… makes one wonder if the reverse of your assertion isn’t true…”
There’s always that possibility. But speaking only for myself, when a product comes out that keeps my system running in spite of the numerous changing threats…I’m grateful. I also want to stand up for it so it will continue and I can benefit from it long term. What good if only the folks who have issues post (especially if a lot are not as keen to read the answers posted by the company previously)? If my post seems unusually defensive, so be it. I don’t state the folks having difficulties shouldn’t post, but Uniblue appears to be responding to this “obscure little thread” and that’s worth noting.

It sucks. A download of their PC Speedup crashed Windows and I had to do a total restore.
I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone.
BTW – When they offer the “Not Stisfied” refund just try to get it.
Whose paying this jerk anyway!

Dear Kent,
Did you report any error to support? Can you please get in touch with me: hilaryr@uniblue.net? Frank (Support Manager)and I want to trace your support ticket, and we need some detail from you.

i tried the registry scan… within seconds of clicking ” SCAN ” my pc was taken over and my system32 was taken from my control… I am no I.T wiz but i once had a pc that had reasonable performance, now i have a boat anchor… Even all the restore options were disabled… now i am trying to reinsall my os but having trouble with that also..

Actually Garry, a great deal of other “stuff” was running — and always is.

And quite apart from all the legitimate applications/services/etc running behind the scenes, the most potent threats are always the ones you have no indication of.

It’s quite clear to any knowledgeable observer that your system has no worthwhile protection in place at all.

Until you are prepared to accept responsibility for securing your own system you will continue to face these sort of problems — which, I can absolutely guarantee you from your description, has nothing to do with a Registry scan.

For the umpteenth time: The right tool for the right job, and REGISTRY SCANNERS ARE NOT ANTI-MALWARE TOOLS!!!!

Actually Bill I am running an up to date norton programme and was when i was infected.. I wasnt looking for ANTI-MALWARE TOOLS. It was the registry scanner that i was wanting to have a look at… The second i pressed “scan now” and gave the programme permission to run is when the trouble started… You can fob it off, and maybe i am incorrect but seems too co-incedental that i can run my pc for 18 months and 1 click on a scanner stuffs it up… Only to be told that it isnt possible.. Now as i say im no wiz but thats no excuse to treat me like an idiot or a liar

Garry, if you try to turn against me with accusations that I never made, I will simply stop attempting to help you. No loss to me.

Now, installing anti-malware applications doesn’t mean you are protected. That’s a common self-delusion that leaves the uninformed masses blissfully unaware of their true status, with critical personal data being stolen from right under their noses.

If they are real lucky then eventually the snoop-ware blows up or causes a crash — the first indication that something is wrong that needs attention soonest.

Of course if they had decent, proven protective applications in place AND CORRECTLY CONFIGURED, they would have had much more timely warning.

Here’s a tip: I won’t have any Norton/Symantec anti-malware product on any of my systems or any of my clients systems. More troublesome junk it would be hard to find.

The mere fact that you suffered the situation you described is proof positive that any security you may think you have in place is in fact ineffective. That puts you on a par with about a zillion other computer users. “Uneducated” doesn’t necessarily translate to “idiot” — but it’s still not forgivable once you become aware of the true situation.

You only have two options: you educate yourself or you pay someone else to do it for you.

> seems too co-incedental that i can run my pc for
> 18 months and 1 click on a scanner stuffs it up

That’s the whole point – it can’t!

No *HEALTHY* PC is going to have any reaction to a Registry scan by a product that I know from personal investigation is not itself some form of attack-ware.

Is it possible for a Registry edit (aka “fix”) to cause a problem. Yes, definitely. Go back through my posts above and you will see that I have already addressed that possibility — already spoken about things you should be aware of. And also take note of the repeated emphasis on Registry Backup.

From your description, your reaction to the event was extreme and probably inappropriate — there was most likely a much less destructive recovery route you could have taken.

my whole system was taken over… i couldnt close the reg booster… windows were opening and closing by them selves… i couldnt use task manager or restore. I had to re format a partition and re install my O/S which has helped but the system now randomly freezes.

a company that offers FREE and then asks you to pay cannot be trusted. I am uninstalling it and i keep my fingersx crossed , i also criticize bleepingcomputers and any other site that accept their advertixxsing, shame…

What’s amazing is that anonymous critics can spout any illogical nonsense they like and be taken seriously. Anyone with real experience can immediately recognize that some of the claims made here as to problems that a Registry SCAN caused to be utterly ridiculous.

You may notice that this “cheerleader” isn’t hiding behind a pen-name. I’ve identified myself and I’m easy to check out. If you do so and you thus decide I don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s your prerogative entirely. You are free to pursue your own path.

But hopefully others, who may otherwise have been misled by some of the misinformation being spread, will take a different view and learn something from the exposure.

I’ve no doubt that some of the problems being reported (although often reported inadequately or inaccurately, thus making diagnosis difficult) stem from the running of a Registry FIX (but not from a SCAN). As I’ve explained in other messages here, it is quite possible for Registry corruption to be too extreme to be repaired by any automated software tool.

But even in those situations the result doesn’t NEED to be catastrophic, and recovery (at least to the pre-FIX state) is rarely all that difficult for someone who has taken appropriate precautions and knows what they’re doing.

If you haven’t taken appropriate precautions and don’t know what you’re doing, the next thing to do would be to seek help, rather than panic and start laying the blame everywhere except where it belongs.

Your marketing tactic of a “free scan” is both deceptive and WRONG. The Registry Boost is not solving the problem I have, the solution from your technical staff is not working for me, and every time I log on I have UNIBLUE in my face.

This is the second and FINAL TIME I will ever accept a FREE SCAN — what a SCAM — No Credibility with me. I wish I had the time to figure out how to get my money back and I will now have my “tech support” come remove the trash that I purchased “for free” — DISAPPOINTED – and your MARKETING SCAM may make you some money in the short term — in the long term you will have NO CREDIBILITY —

By the way, click this button and I will tell you how to double your business in one week for free (click here: +++++)

Frankly Hilary, your company should consider the repeated message from users who feel scammed. I would really like to believe your company is reputable. If so, why would they continue a practice that leaves consumers feeling cheated? Let’s say you honestly believe you are being completely fair. You still must accept the fact that consumers do not experience your marketing practice in that way. I realize your scan is free and you only promise a scan, still I perceived that you would provide something of value to me. Instead, all you provided was something of value to you (apparent evidence of product need).

What is it about this discussion that seems to be attracting so many people with such a poor command of English vocabulary?

A couple of dozen messages above this, Grant Laylor eloquently and adequately explained the meaning and use of “scan”, but obviously it needs repeating, so here again is what he said:

—— Extract ——
Such comments only expose the limits of your vocabulary. Do you not understand the meaning of the word “scan”.

Scanning anything, whether it be a file, a hardcopy document or the horizon, means to ASSESS the object being scanned. It doesn’t mean “to change the state of”. Why is it that so many people see only what they WANT TO SEE instead of what is actually there, written in black and white.

The formal definition and common usage of the word “scan” are perfectly clear, as is illustrated here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scan. There is nothing in the definition that even remotely alludes to “assess and change”.
———————

Unless you want to declare the dictionary wrong, I really don’t know how it could be any clearer.

I am looking for a program to help me with maintaining the registry on my PC.

But reading through these posts one can see that some of the most vociferous people promoting this product are very rude, and certainly the most arrogant and obnoxious hawkers I have ever seen connected with any product. There are obviously some massive egos at play here Too much to deal with for us humble little people. It just doesn’t seem very professional and reflects poorly on the brand.

The original author of the review seems to be the only one worth paying any attention to and comes across as a professional.

I would expect that those of whom this shoe fits will be the ones to eagerly confirm it and identify themselves by their response. So lets sit back and watch the show!

So are you looking for honest advice or do you just want people to be nice to you? In my experience really knowledgeable people often have egos when it comes to their special area of expertise. Why not? They’ve earned the right to a bit of ego. And if they have the knowledge you need why would you care how it’s given to you?

I bought Bill Healys security book long before it was ever given publicity on this website with David’s video, and its still the best buy I ever made online. Also every week I learn something new and useful from his newsletter and again whenever I run across him in a chat room somewhere.

In over a year of reading his material I’ve come across him helping people for free in different forums and I’ve never seen him be anything but honest and helpful. Probably the problem is that some people can’t take honest.

The most rudeness I see here has been from the complainers, not from the helpers. Just look back and see how many times Hilary from Uniblue has tried to politely assist some ranting novice and she doesn’t even get a response.

I’m no expert either, but I’m much wiser for having found the right people to listen to. If you are serious about wanting to learn then do what I did. Go to Bills website and invest in your own welfare.

It seems to me to have turned into a clash of egos and a slanging match. Personally I’ve not had a problem with the product as I’ve said before. I would speculate that the problems that people are having are malware or corruption-related, whatever, but are unrelated to Uniblue’s product directly in itself.

If you’re looking for a registry maintenance solution I suggest either this Uniblue product or PC Pitstop Optimize 2.

I’ve been reading a lot of comments by your customers and potential customers who are not satisfied with either the product (and how it interacts with their installed software) or your marketing offer of a free scan (with an “n”).

I just want you to know that my Reg Booster works just fine and I’m pleased with it. Money well spent.

I have not one complain about Registry Booster. Been using it a couple of months and it has really given me back some speed to certain aspects of my system.

My question though is, when I originally ran the application, I had about 400 errors or so. Since then, whenever I do run it, I always have between at least 2-8 errors. Shouldn’t a scan, cleanup and restart completely clean up my registry to the point where there should be no errors? Is this suppose to happen? Anyone who could help I’d appreciate it.

In the same way that more defragmantation occurs on a hard disk instantly after a defrag, and in the same way that cookies are added to your computer as soon as you start browsing the internet having erased all your cookies; so the registry begins to err as soon as you atart using your computer after a registry fix.

Now here’s an idea for Uniblue: Since Diskeeper have come up with an automatic disk defragmentation program; you people could come up with an automatic registry cleaner/defragmenter prog. – That would be a first and could bring extra needed finances to the company if it gets good reviews post-launch.

The Windows registry is a very dynamic storehouse — it is constantly being manipulated by just about every aspect of the Windows operating system and by many installed programs, whether they be from Microsoft or from another publisher.

In an ideal world all programmers would address the registry exactly according to the guidelines set down by Microsoft, and they would have their programs clean up after themselves. But this is far from a perfect world.

One of the reasons that so many third-party programs break when there is a fundamental change in some aspect of an operating system (such as a new Service Pack released), is that too many programmers take shortcuts, invent their own way of doing things, or fail to take note that Microsoft has declared some coding procedure or method to be “deprecated” (ie obsolete and no longer to be used). The programmer writes his program code for an existing environment and, by ignoring the “rules and recommendations”, leaves himself open to failure when the environment is changed/upgraded. This can lead to all sorts of problems, including inappropriate writes to the Registry.

Then there are program crashes. If an application crashes while it is writing to the registry, the registry entry would in all probability be invalid. The potential impact of such an invalid entry may range from inconsequential to critical.

Programs using the registry as temporary storage and then not removing the temporary data when finished with it is also not an uncommon problem.

Registry errors can range from critical/crash-causing to minor and of no real consequence. Sometimes very minor non-critical errors in the Registry will be cleaned up by Windows’ own internal housekeeping.

But in all of those examples, and many others as well, a good registry cleaner will be able to detect spurious and orphaned entries and take appropriate action.

So running your registry cleaner regularly and finding a few errors each time is quite normal and to be expected. The time to worry is if you are seeing very large numbers of errors at each regular interval. That would indicate that it’s time to investigate further.

One other point: I often see people comparing different registry cleaners by the number of “errors” that each detects. Admittedly some cleaners are more aggressive than others, but most often the difference lies in just what the registry cleaner publisher considers to be an “error” worth counting? Some registry cleaners will intentionally ignore (not count) the likes of those very minor anomalies I mentioned above and that would perhaps be taken care of by Windows’ internal housekeeping.

What really surprises me is the fact this thread has been going on for over a year, mirriade of complaints (valid or not, but then any complaint is valid), the general public, Uniblue support people, Uniblue management, third party, writers, everybody jumped in the debate.

Uniblue never bothered to remove the term ‘FREE SCAN’ or state clearly for the ignorant masses that this was just a glance, a peek, in passing at the computer. To FIX is extra.

Very simple to hide behind semantics and leave things as they are and still reap the profits.

This is taken from there own FREE SCAN link. If this is not false and misleading advertisement, I don’t know what is. It does not state in any word, phrase or form that a purchase IS required. So you run the scan and discover 600 errors. Sure i’ll buy the product for $30.00 based on good faith.

This garbage just appeared on my parents computer about a week and a half ago. No uninstaller, none of the steps described here work(New version’s installer fails to download installation data), and most importantly, there seems to be no other options, though I’m still looking for a way, preferably with hijackthis.

What a frickin’ sham. I assume this is just another one of those “We’ve found 200 gazillion problems on your computer. Pay us now to fix them or your computer will certainly die soon, probably, maybe, perhaps.” kind of programs.

On what results do you base the conclusion that this application is “garbage”? Come on now, you can’t just declare something to be rubbish without backing up your claim.

> just appeared on my parents computer
> about a week and a half ago.

That would be just after you, your parents, or someone else with access installed it — whether they knew what they were doing or not (sounds like probably “not”).

> No uninstaller

Many, many applications don’t provide their own uninstaller. There is no necessity for a software installation to provide its own separate uninstaller routine if the standard Windows uninstall process will do the job. If there is not an entry for “Uniblue RegistryBooster 2″ in Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs then it is your parent’s system that has a problem.

> What a frickin’ sham. I assume this is just another
> one of those “We’ve found 200 gazillion problems on
> your computer. Pay us now to fix them or your computer
> will certainly die soon, probably, maybe, perhaps.”
> kind of programs.

More hyperbole but little substance.

After examining Registry Booster fairly thoroughly on various levels of hardware and different versions of Windows I came to pretty much the same conclusion as did Ryan Passey in his original article above.

Registry Booster is a user-friendly implementation that does the job at least as well as any other Registry cleaner I have tried, with a lot less fuss than most, and is to be particularly commended for the way in which it almost forces the user to take adequate backups before any registry changes are made.

Of course it’s impossible to absolutely protect the terminally stupid from themselves, and it looks as if some of the negative posters in this thread managed to alter their Registry without first taking a backup to fall back on.

Others no doubt had a backup (forced on them by Registry Booster), encountered a problem, forgot they had a backup or didn’t know what to do with it, then proceeded with their own inappropriate and sometimes destructive “removal” or “recovery” remedy. Probably much as you are about to do with HijackThis!

After careful testing of Registry Booster I recommended it to my clients, customers and subscribers. I have yet to have a single negative feedback.

I’d also draw your attention to David Risley’s update to the original article, in which he said:

“In my experience, those people who are claiming that Registry Booster is malware and will not uninstall are not that computer literate themselves. In our tests, it DOES remove easily and causes no harm to our test computers. There are differing opinions out there on how effective the software is, but I am confident (at this point) that there is nothing dangerous about their free scan. People need to realize that ANY program that affects the Windows registry has the possibility of messing something up. That is why it is SO important to back up your registry before running any scanning software, whether it be Registry Booster or something else.”

I agree 100%. But then Ryan Passey, David Risley, I and several other satisfied users/reviewers of Registry Booster only do this stuff for a living. What would we know?

Bill quoted:
> What a frickin’ sham. I assume this is just another
> one of those “We’ve found 200 gazillion problems on
> your computer. Pay us now to fix them or your computer
> will certainly die soon, probably, maybe, perhaps.”
> kind of programs.

Bill said, “More hyperbole but little substance.”

You’ll need a little empathy to understand this Bill. I rings perfectly clear to me. Whether Uniblue serves a real use or not, it probably sells the bulk of its product to people who for one reason (Uniblue claim “removes errors”) or another spend money in the vain hope that Registry Booster will solve the problems of their distressed system.

Some under promise and over deliver. Uniblue believes in the reverse approach. I do not believe that Uniblue is malware. I think many of the problems people experience here relate more to their distressed systems. But Uniblue is knows about the unreasonable expectations and happily accepts the money.

And incidentally, your repeated suggestion that people seek qualified help is not realistic. We buy a computer to help us. Unless we are a highly profitable corporation, we don’t have the money for the support you suggest. Every person on this site would gladly turn their problems over to a qualified professional if they could afford it. And by the way, who is qualified? I find that a very difficult commodity to find or recognize.

I really don’t care about apologetics or condescending attitudes, I just want instructions about how the heck you get rid of this thing. There’s no uninstaller and downloading the new version supposedly to get the program entry in add/remove programs fails after downloading “installation data”. And what kind of program requires you to download a new version to get rid of something that you didn’t even install in the first place? The reason for the malware accusation is that this is exactly what organized malware writers do: Pump out something that cannot be removed, then when they catch some flak for this, they make people install a new version of it to get it uninstalled, for which the user has only the word of the original culprits. Versions of Gator, WhenU, etc come to mind. Same with all those rogue spyware removers. My guess at what happened is that these guys have a “rogue affiliate” pushing an early version.

So after your thorough examinations, do you have a list or log of files and/or services that need to be deleted or unregistered that you could post? Perhaps just an install log from the new 2009 version that people are instructed to download to remove the old version? I’m willing to leave this as an unsolved mystery if I can just get information on how to actually remove this thing.

There’s nothing wrong with not knowing, and asking for assistance. That’s how we all learnt, and you’ll usually get help if you ask for it civilly. If I feel any emotion at all on the subject its embarrassment for people who rant and rave and lay blame when they simply don’t have a clue.

> There’s no uninstaller…

If there is no entry for “Uniblue RegistryBooster 2″ in Add/Remove Programs then the odds are that, for whatever reason, you got a bad install, or some aspect of your operating system is malfunctioning. A clean install of Registry Booster on a properly functioning system *WILL NOT* present uninstall or usability problems.

If there is no “Uniblue RegistryBooster 2″ option available in Add/Remove Programs, have you looked at the files in the RegistryBooster folder under C:\Program Files\Uniblue\? A clean install would have left unins000.exe and unins000.dat.

> downloading the new version supposedly to get the program
> entry in add/remove programs fails after downloading
> “installation data”.

And so you want that to be Uniblue’s problem. Why?

> And what kind of program requires you to download a
> new version to get rid of something

Very few would *REQUIRE* it, but sometimes a reinstall can correct an earlier problem. Not always, but it’s worth trying. Then again, depending on the nature and extent of the existing corruption, it may do no good at all.

> …that you didn’t even install in the first place?

Unless you’re really determined to embarrass yourself I suggest you drop the “it installed itself” line. There’s absolutely no evidence at all to suggest that there is anything even remotely drive-by about RegistryBooster or the Uniblue website. There are plenty of ways to determine such exploits and if such existed we wouldn’t be having this conversation — Uniblue would have long been exposed and out of business. You have no idea the enormous amount of resources that are deployed right across the Web looking for and exposing that sort of thing, and a well rated site like Uniblue would be picked up in no time.

> My guess at what happened is that these guys have
> a “rogue affiliate” pushing an early version.

That too is very easy to determine. Have you been in touch with Uniblue support? If you provide them with RegistryBooster files they will be able to tell you exactly what version you have.

> So after your thorough examinations, do you have
> a list or log of files and/or services…

I’m happy to help with general questions, but I don’t speak for Uniblue. You need to do what you should have done in the first place — open a civil dialog with Uniblue support, provide them with any information they request, and follow their instructions. Then, if you can, come back here and say they couldn’t or wouldn’t help!

Well relying on my folks’ word probably got the better of my judgment even if they deny downloading it. Guess I’ll have to get in touch with Uniblue. By the way, already checked the directory, it consists of 3 exes: KillRBProcess.exe, RegistryBooster.exe, Startregistrybooster.exe. One config file: fitting names “inifile” and 4 dll files.

> relying on my folks’ word probably got the better
> of my judgment even if they deny downloading it.

Denying downloading it and denying KNOWLEDGE of downloading it are two different things. Inexperienced PC operators are always doing things they’re not fully aware of. That’s why it’s so stupid that so many employers don’t engage in practical training of staff — training that goes beyond knowing how to use Word or Excel or whatever. I’ve proved time and again that staff trained in even the basics of PC and online security become more aware of the whole computing environment, make fewer mistakes overall and cost less in downtime.

Sounds about right as far as it goes, but you are also missing the Help file RB.CHM as well as the two that I mentioned above. Of course having the main files present doesn’t mean they’re not corrupted in some way. Again, you need to sort that out with Uniblue.

Here’s a provocative suggestion that might apply to many people who have posted in this thread:

You mightn’t think so now, but any adverts experience may actually have been fortuitous. Often there are no obvious signs of an underlying problem in some part of the operating system, until it shows up in something apparently unrelated. Before starting to lay blame for some mishap you should consider if what you’re seeing is the whole story. You should look at things like:

– Do you reboot BEFORE & AFTER installing ALL software?

– Are there COMPETENT anti-virus and anti-spyware tools installed? Not all such tools are created equal and some are worthless.
– Were they installed correctly, with reboots BEFORE & AFTER each installation?
– Are they up to date? Out Of Date = Close to Useless.
– Have they been properly configured for your system? Far too many people install anti-malware programs and walk away. That’s only 25%-50% of the job done.
– Have full scans been scheduled to run regularly and automatically ?

– Has the latest stable Service Pack for your Windows version been installed?
– Microsoft issues patches & updates on the second Tuesday of each month. Has your system being configured to scan for applicable patches/updates as they are released?

– What about non-Microsoft applications. It’s not just Windows that needs to be checked for patches/updates?

Sounds like a lot of work?

Well, it does take a little bit of effort to get set up properly, but it’s not that hard to do when you learn a few tricks and tactics, and the judicious use of automation can generally keep things rolling along quite nicely without a lot of intervention.

And the pay-off can be substantial.

Despite all the publicity, and all the evidence to the contrary, it never ceases to amaze me that the average computer user still thinks it’s an urban myth that somebody else can have access to their computer and be using it constantly without their knowledge. Many people who will read this are in exactly that position, yet they would never believe it for a moment. Literally millions and millions of computers in the hands of ordinary people just like *YOU* are currently compromised in just such a way, and until something goes wrong you and they will never know it.

Then one day the computer owner runs some perfectly legitimate yet fairly intrusive application such as a Registry or spyware cleaner.

The cleaner knocks out a cyber-crims code reference, so the next time the rogue program attempts to report back to its controller it causes a system instability. WHAM! “The %^$#% program stuffed my computer”. Did it really? Or did it maybe just save your ass from further abuse?

Hypothetical? Sure. But something akin to that happens far more often than legitimate programs on stable systems just blowing up for no reason.

Before installing anything, and especially a utility application, do your homework, get recommendations from reliable sources, only download from the home Web site, and follow a safe installation procedure.

It’s amazing to me — that so many postings are complaining about what common sense should be quite CLEAR! Not many companies GIVE AWAY there products AND stay in business!! Hello!?! Uniblue and others clearly state that the download is free (“free download”). Well, of course! This is only so one can SAMPLE the wares. Why blame the company for misleading advertising when a little common sense is all that is required? It’s business, folks! We all should be used to this by now. C’mon! So many complaints of this nature, though legitimate, are still rather childish.
I do wholeheartedly agree that at least a PARTIALLY ACTIVED version would be much more influential to the buyer. For example: I cleaned my registry with another “cleaner” before trying Uniblue Registry Booster. It found an additional 552 registry errors!! Wow! Here’s the rub: How do I KNOW these 552 are SAFE to remove? (even with a registry backup?) I don’t need to create any more problems in my life!
This is why the SCANNING download doesn’t help much. It doesn’t let me experience the VALUE and efficacy of the product first hand. It just looks good. And that’s not enough to convince me. I was going to download the other Uniblue products and purchase 3 of them. I’m hesitant. I don’t feel confident enough to invest the time or money on something I haven’t really tasted. That’s it.

I just tried the Uniblue Registry Booster 2009. I was put off by the obnoxious way the program started–I clicked on the Start Menu icon thinking that the program would *open* and wait for me to decide what I wanted it to do. But, no, it opened and blasted-away scanning my registry. Well, I could live with that.

But then it reported that I had some 140-odd problems in my registry and gave me ONLY ONE OPTION. I could click on the button to fix the problems. Or I could do nothing. The Close Window button was not functional. There was no offer to let me review the problems. No nothing!

I had to open the Task Manager to shut down the damn Uniblue program. And that *always* makes me thing bad things about software. (Malware works exactly the same way, so, really, Uniblue is getting some seriously bad advice on putting together a good UI.)

The Task Manager said that the Uniblue program could not be stopped because the program was waiting for a response from me. Oh, that’s right! That Fix-Everything-or-Nothing Button.

So I was just delighted to tell the Task Manager to force the Uniblue program down.

So, why didn’t I want Uniblue to fix all of my registry issues without letting me look at them first? Well, because there are changes to my registry that represent a lot of work and that I hope to keep.

Also, I had just run 2 registry scans immediately before starting (and auto-running) Uniblue’s Booster. I figured that this might really highlight any special strengths of the Booster program. I also scan my registry several times each day; a clean registry is scanned by multiple programs in seconds. So I was in no panic to let Uniblue “fix” anything without first letting me see what-all it wanted to fix.

Did the Uniblue Registry Booster program offer me the option of backing up my registry? NO. Did the Uniblue program even remind me that I need to do a backup? NO.

As it happens, I understood how Uniblue was marketing this software via a free scan. And, yes, I did see the difference between a “scan” and a “restore” or some such. But I think the other comments here were right about how Uniblue really was deceptive in its “free scan” blurbs. I didn’t know if I’d actually get anything free or not, but I expect that most people would be misled by Uniblue’s ad copy. It’s that old favorite called the Bait and Switch! And–duh!–antagonizing the customers first thing is just not the way to go! And the Uniblue people want you to *trust* them??

Anyway, . . . there was no way I wanted any pushy program like Uniblue’s Booster on my machine, so I didn’t delay. I used the Windows Add/Remove to unistall that sucker quick-time. And I ran some scans to make sure there weren’t any surprises left behind.

So I have no idea if Uniblue’s Registry Booster is a good program or not. I just did a Google search and found 2 sites that rate registry cleaners, and Uniblue’s Booster didn’t make the final cut in either of them.

As for the nice folks at Uniblue who have been posting here, . . . I think it’s great that you’re here. But, really, I think there’s a clear indication that Uniblue needs to FIX some seriously user-nasty aspects of its UI and internet marketing. Get the fixes done by, say, yesterday?

And . . . sorry to say, I was just looking at the reviews of Uniblue’s Booster on Newegg and others, and it seems that when buying anything from Uniblue online, one has to stay focused and make sure that the magic numbers are saved. Sure, that’s the way these things work. But apparently, if the magic number has been lost, Uniblue won’t give you the time of day when it comes to customer support.

I thought it was interesting that Uniblue was advertising that they’re a “Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.” When was the last time *Microsoft* was nice to anybody??

I have now read each and every comment in this forum from beginning to end and wonder first who asked Bill Hely for his help in solving and now responding more than the vendor to each and every post with a long winded diatribes about all his readers, clients, and whatnots which just also happens to include a link to his book and website. Honestly, you may know more about this stuff than anyone, but you are very condesending and yes, rude.

My situation may be very similar to some of the most recent posts and I include it here not for your help Bill, so you can save your long winded column for someone else, but to ask the vendor if THEY have heard of my situation.

A pop-up was displayed on a family members computer which said they had a virus and that they needed to click on the link to fix they problem and they fell for the scam. The results was that Registry Booster and a product called Spyware Doctor were both installed on their computer. Again, they were installed when they clicked on the link that was included in the pop-up.

Does your company use pop-ups to promote the products listed and/or are you aware of any other companies that include your product as part of a pop-up advertisement?

Again Bill, I am asking Hilary or someone else that actually works for the company.

Also forgot to add that the result of clicking on the link is that many of the registry entries are no longer working and shortcuts that were previously accessible on the desktop are long longer working and are requesting the software to be reinstalled. The system has become very slow and I suspect that a virus has been installed on the system. I’m not accusing you of adding a virus, but all of this happened when the link to fix the “problem” was displayed and the two software packages were installed.
Thanks,
Terry

came across this review after googling registry booster. I just bought the ‘2009’ edition and to be honest am quite satisfied with the investment… what I cannot understand is the reason why all these comments about a $30 product. How can u expect any company to allow their product to be used for free… especially when it fixes the problem you have. Its like your plumber fixing up your house for free… then see if you like it and if you do you can pay!!

The only reason I decided to pay was their 30 day money back. You can actually buy it and if you dont like it return it. (and if you cannot remove it just face the fact that your PC is probably screwed).

I guess that would be my problem. I have gone to Uniblue’s website for a refund and have yet to hear back from them, its been 9 days and still no response. I knew there would be a fee and I gladly paid. My problem is Uniblue has not sent the code to unlock the program & since I can’t unlock it, its of no use to me. All I’d like is my money back…its been 9 days Uniblue I am an unsatisfied customer and I would like a refund. And a side note to Bill, there is no need to be rude to anyone on here…if Uniblue was a stand up company there wouldn’t be so many complaints.

Poor Terry…apparently not only doesn’t know enough to understand and follow clear instructions, but is now trying to help others. If there’s one message that comes through very loud and clear by reading “each and every comment” on this thread, it’s that some people should not play with things they don’t understand. I don’t know the difference between a carburettor and an air-conditioner, so I don’t try to play around under the bonnet of my car. Instead, I hire a mechanic when something goes wrong or when I want a tune-up. The same is true of computers…pay a small fee and get someone who knows what they’re doing to fix your problems, Terry. You clearly can’t understand enough of the sensible stuff that has been presented on this column so far to be of any use to your family member. By the way, this is an open blog, not a personal dialogue between you and whomever you deign to specify. I (and I’m sure many others) welcome the clear and informative explanations Bill Hely has given to date. I’ve actually learned something from him. So Terry, save your own “long-winded” instructions about who can and can’t make comment.

Yes, poor Terry indeed. There’s nothing wrong with being a beginner, we all start out as beginners in everything we do. But if only these bumbling whining amateurs knew how much they reveal about themselves, their own lack of knowledge and competence, and the mess they’ve let their systems get into.

Hey Terry, haven’t you learned yet that you should never try to fool a pro? Almost every single point you raised is complete rubbish, but very revealing to anyone who does have a clue.

Given your attitude I wouldn’t try to help you even if you begged. If Bill Hely is prepared to waste time on you I suggest you grab him as fast as you can. Clearly others have appreciated his input, and as a fellow IT professional I can’t fault anything he’s contributed so far (and believe me, professionals don’t always agree). In fact I commend him on his ability to express technical issues in a manner that non-technical people can follow.

And as safemate said, if you want to have a private conversation with Uniblue then go to their website. If that’s really what you want. It looks more like you just want a public forum where you can act like a know-all and get some attention. How’s that working out for you, by the way?

I have just installed the trial version of uniblue registry booster and did a scan, i have a whopping 800 errors but not yet decided whether to buy the software as my computer seems to run fine for my use, i tried to close uniblue in the taskbar and after clicking close anyway the icon wouldnt go away, so i brought up my task manager processes and closed the registry booster process, that got rid of the icon lol, i then clicked unistall and it did it no problem, so there is nothing wrong with this software.

Hi All, I came to this forum via a Google search to check out the pros and cons of Uniblue Registry Booster AFTER having downloaded the free scan and removal of the first 15 errors.
Uniblue was recommended in a reply to a question in the CNET Forum to which I have long been a subscriber as I am still very much a novice with pc’s and as such have gleaned some useful information about computers in general.
After downloading I ran the scan and it discovered some 700 odd errors and then fixed 15 of them. (For safety’s sake I also took advantage of the backup facility) For £19.95 it seemed like a good buy and it even offered an extra software package free so I was going to buy it but then after reading all the small print I could see I saw an obscure reference to an automatic collection of an annual fee which had not been mentioned anywhere else (but there is ONE reference on this forum)so I thought I’d check it out here to see if anyone from Uniblue can verify the situation? Does £19.95 buy the kit outright and also the added free bundle, or is there an annual fee for both – if so what is the fee?
I am reserving my decision to purchase until I know what I am actually paying for.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Bill Hely for his excellent free advice on this forum which if you went to PC World would cost you £40 a shot and you would get crap advice, yet some morons on this forum see fit to attempt to deride him. Incidentally it was very obvious to me that Uniblue were only ever offering a free SCAN and NOT a complete fix, but not so obvious about the annual subs?

Without doing any research I take it that you’re from UK as you quote currency in £s.

You mention that you go to PC World (British rip-off computer store, owned by the John Lewis Partnership, that sells yesterday’s computers at today’s prices and virtually forces you to take out the same amount again in insurance and extended warranty…)and ask for advice, for which they charge you £40 a shot.

They saw you coming! There are only one or two people per PC World store who know anything whatsoever about computers, and even the “expert’s” paid advice can be fairly lousy.

PC World are salespeople: They are out to make as much money as they can. They’re mostly computer-illiterate shop-assistants paid a lousy basic wage plus commission on sales, and the biggest earner is selling insurance and warranties.

I creased up when they had a box advertised on TV as “cutting-edge technology”: If they’d have advertised it some three years before they might have been right. The following week I built a better box than that one for a customer who was originally going to go to PC World for £20 less than PC World were charging.

That’s why I started Kustom Komputa in the first place: Rather than pulling a cloned machine from last year off-the-shelf and selling it for a profit with a warranty that costs extra, and that mostly never provides any value to the customer, I build the in-some-way unique box for the customer to suit their needs. I sell it with a standard year’s warranty included within the price; which is comparable to or cheaper than PC World’s prices normally.

Just think; 2 visits to PC World for “advice” would pay for a year and a half’s membership of PC Mech – where you could find friendly and better advice anytime you want.

I just had to say what was on my mind when I read your comment.

I’d answer your question if I could remember the answer, having used Uniblue in the past. maybe you could try contacting them directly via this page.

Hi Sharron,
I hope you’re feeling better now that you had your whinge about PC World (whom I believe are owned by Dixons Retail Group).
Yes I do pop in their stores occasionally, mainly to buy peripherals like printer carts etc and of course one notices the big sign on the Customer services desk which advertises the cost of 30 mins ‘expert’ advice, which is why I made my comment! Of course PC World is a more prominent name in the market place here in the UK and so it tends to get visited a lot more than ‘Kustom Komputa’ – possibly because they are literate in English at least!! I certainly hope that you are not located in the UK as DRG may take exception to your comments and sue – unless you can back up your claims with proof! And they certainly did not ‘see me coming’, in fact the staff there – however low paid they may or may not be – were thoroughly courteous and helpful and made no attempt to pressure sell me anything, it wouldn’t have worked even if they tried it!
I trust your own build computers have a more reliable memory than you own Sharron – but thanks for trying anyway!

Forgive the late reply; I wasn’t going to bother further with this thread, but since people are insistant on continuing it I’ll feed the flamers:

You are correct, in that it demonstrates that I run an albit tiny company that builds and supplies “Kustomised” computers, built with the interests of the customer in mind, rather than a maxinised profit-margin at the customer’s expense.

If you consider a box as stated as “cutting-edge technology”, if you consider their “enforced” warranty to constitute value-for-money, if you consider all PC World staff to be computer experts rather than salespeople, then you will no doubt be happy with PC World’s offers. – Fair play to you.

If you consider their overall image as fair and ethical then that is your opinion which I have no intention of attempting to change in your case.

I, on the other hand, was stating my opinion based upon the facts as I understand them. If I am wrong in any way then I apologise to PC World and will apologise directly to them if necessary as well as stating my error on this forum.

I see no point to your efforts to start a libel suite, other than maybe a personal vendetta based upon maybe some deep-lying insecurity. Your attempt to do so, however, combined with the current economic climate, may assist PC World to realise that those with a degree of discernment have got their number, and this might just spur them on to change their act and evolve with the economic downturn to be a more customer-friendly organisation; perhaps taking a leaf from Kustom Komputa’s copybook in the process if they should deem it fit to do so? This could well be within their own long-term interests.

Do you know; I would love to be able to go to PC World and say “I’d like such-and-such computer built to such-and-such specifications”, in the knowledge that I’d get a great deal from them, both top-quality and value-for-money, knowing that they are there for me, their customer, rather than simply to line their own pockets.

I wish them success with their new business model, should they embark upon it in such or similar light, as they evolve along with circumstances.

There will come a time, perhaps it’s now, when the public will wake up and say “Enough is enough”: This whole “global recession” scenario has been caused, to a certain extent, by everyone doing just what I’m referring to herein: Thinking of themselves and their profits only, rather than that along with the interests of others upon whom they depend for their livelihood: Their customers, business associates, and the overall economic health of this current “global village”.

I refer primarily to the banks, who saw $ signs in unwise investments and proceeded anyway just to turn a fast buck.

David from Uniblue here… each of our products ships with 1 year of ‘Active Protection’. This means that for 1 year you will receive both updates (definitions, databases etc.) as well as all product upgrades (tweaks, improvements and major new releases).

Once the 1 year period expires you can then renew the protection plan if you want to continue receiving updates/upgrades. If you choose not to and cancel the plan instead, the product will still continue to work as it did when you first bought it. The only difference is that you will not benefit from Uniblue’s latest releases.

Hope this is clear. If you need more info just visit http://ative.uniblue.com – here you will find more info and FAQ’s about Uniblue’s Active Protection plans.

Thanks David, you’ve answered my question fully but may I suggest you make it a little more obvious on the trial version so that a prospective purchaser like myself can make an instant decision?
Thanks again, Geoff.

I’m having a similar problem with uniblue, except that I’ve never tried to install their free version.. I was in my systems folder the other night when I came across something I had never seen before. “SpeedUpMyPc” I thought to myself, what’s this? So I opened it up. BIG MISTAKE. Now every time I turn my computer on, it put their GD’d pop up on my screen urging me to install their program. Yeah, and try to find it somewhere to uninstall it. It’s not even installed on my computer, but it’s running on start up. It’s in my system tray running as I’m typing this. Right click, close,,, but to no avail. It will not shut down. Would this not be called Hi-Jacking in the real World?. I just wrote them an email. And I hope I was nice, But I’m pretty ticked off at this Company. My advice to anyone who thinks of installing this program. DON’T, save yourself the headache. It’s not worth the aggravation.

@ Barry, I did finally get rid of it on start-up. But it’s still in a folder some where on my computer. And uniblue did respond to my email.But I don’t think they really read what I wrote to them.Because they were telling me how to uninstall it from my, Add, or remove.

Dear Bill Hely,
Thank you for your efforts to enlighten about the problem. First I tried the trial version of the RegistryBooster. It was OK. When I started to read comments on the RegistryBooster I was almost convinced that it would be a mistake to buy it. Some people are too fast to blame somebody or something when something is going on not like they are expecting. Their brain become so busy with complains, that they don’t have time to think and to learn first.
After the reading all comments and thank to your education I decided to buy RegistryBooster. I like it. It works well. I see some improvements in the behavior of my laptop with Vista. I’m going to try how it will work with Windows XP.
Thank you once more,
Boris Feigelson

I tried the free scan and was not real surprised to find out the program was for sale. Actually, I became more interested because very few material things of value are free. In doing some research, was lead to this forum and was surprised at the passion exhibited. Just for fun, I removed the free scan program with the directions from the forum. It disappeared as advertised.
I purchased it and used it on 2 computers at home. BTW, it can be used on up to 3 comp’s. Reviewed the scan files and they all seemed to be useless links, etc. It removed quite a lot of garbage in the registry. Both computers are running well and slightly faster. I’m not a geek by any means, so a few seconds faster on startup is nice, but not earth shattering to me. I believe anything that can make a computer more reliable is a plus. Reg Boost removed considerably more reg clutter than the reg cleaner that is in Norton 360 does, which I use primarily as a virus protection program.
I feel the frustration of a lot of forum contributors, as all of us would like to just use our comp’s. and not be bothered with the nuts and bolts part of it. However, I’m a mechanic by trade, and realize not all is perfection.

If you judge a program by whether it helps you or hurts you, then Reg. Boost is a help.

BTW, if you uncheck it in the startup menu it doesn’t pop up on startup.

Dear Brad,
I’m sorry. You just confirmed the thought in my previous comment about too fast wording. Words run ahead of thinking or analyzing. It was my first attempt to say something in a forum, and I already regret for it. I even gave my full name to give an opportunity to check it if somebody will think like Brad. Just google the name and you have enough information before judging.
Actually, I tested the program in my other laptop with Windows XP. It looks like it works well.
I’m just a consumer and not an expert in any software, and the only intention of my first comment was to thank Bill Hely and to express my respect for his generous contributions to this forum.

I’m sorry Boris. I guess I actually meant that you were like minded. I’m sorry for the confusion of my previous post. I suppose my thoughts of having a computer is this.. I bought it, paid for it. It should have a bit of privacy to it. No program should get into the Registry, and latch their claws onto it. For a program that claims to clean the Registry, It should work silently. Unobtrusive, perhaps that is too much to ask for?

What prompts people like you to even make a post when you have nothing to contribute except misinformation and childish conspiracy theories? It should be clear even to a nasty juvenile that there are experts reading and posting on this page that can see right through pretenders like you. I’m not one of those experts but I’m a lot smarter now after having followed their explanations and advice.

And it’s just as well you didn’t check out Boris before shooting your mouth off, because your ego would have been bruised to discover that he’s obviously your intellectual superior by several orders of magnitude.

Here’s an idea Brad. Why don’t you go over to Bill Hely’s blog and argue with his findings and recommendations. Let’s see how you can handle an intelligent exchange of ACTUAL FACTS.

Gee Sandy, you seem very invested in defending this program; even to the point of insulting people you do not know. I wonder why? Could it be that you are not so impartial as you claim?

I thought Brad’s comments were valid and intelligent. On the other hand, I think Uniblue takes advantage of the distressed. (They are probably right now setting up a booth outside the unemployment office selling useless solutions.) I do not find their application to be of any demonstrative value.

I have been having problems with freezing and performance slow down, suspecting registry problems I decided to have a look at various advertised progs, I was impressed by the Uniblue website and the price of the product. Well having downloaded the trial/free scan, before installing, I decided to do a search and see if there were any reviews on Uniblue, that’s how I ended up here. After reading what everybody has had to say, I came to the conclusion that some of the complaints were not valid, it seems to me that the people at Uniblue, as soon as they were aware of a problem, acknowledged it and put it right, They offer a full 30 day refund, which they appear to honor. Some purchasers have complained that they believe Uniblue is malware or spyware, where they could have got that idea from, is a mystery to me. I have read the Uniblue teams response, which to me was measured and reassuring, I decided install and give it a go. A small program, it installed quickly and easily, it told me I had 1002 errors. I didn’t expect it to clear those errors for free so I purchased it. It worked without a problem, programs and folders open much quicker than they did, while I was at it, I decided to use XPs Disc Cleanup and defrag utilities, when finished; I ticked the box to stop Uniblue from running at start up. I have found this program to be easy to use and do exactly what it says it will do. I do not like adware, search bars or toolbars forced upon me, as far as I can see this program is none of those, I for one am happy with my purchase.

Dave is correct. There is a link to cancel automatic renewal. However, this cancellation is not just for renewal. To cancel renewal you must cancel the subscription. This does not mean that you get a refund, it means that you do not have further access to the application, even though you paid for it. The obvious reason for this is that the buyer will be reluctant to cancel now what is already payed for. The buyer will naturally say, I’ll just cancel that later; I’ve got a whole year.

Slight correction: I’m not sure if the “cancel subscription” is simply wording or actual. The email confirming cancellation indicates the cancellation applies only to automatic renewal. I didn’t reload the program after I wiped my computer so I can’t confirm (naturally, this program was of no use in resolving the system distress messages).

My objection to this program/organization is that they hold out false hope for people with distressed systems (they do this by capturing Google searches related to error messages). This is akin to fake medical people offering pretend solutions to the sick. They don’t mind taking this money, and that seems dishonest. So why would I think they had the integrity to create anything of use? I don’t.

I agree that Uniblue appears to intentionally trick buyers into long-term renewal obligations. Obligations most buyers would reject if Uniblue were more forthright.

The weird thing is that they seem competent enough to create meaningful software. I have no idea if they create software of value, but after this experience with them, I won’t be looking for it.

My computer crashed after installing Power suite 2009. Uniblue was happy to give me a refund, after I accepted that I would not use their program and uninstall it. Loveyly I said, I would love to take the crap off my computer if I could even get it working again. No response from them and no offer of help from them. I am out the cost of a brand new computer. High price to pay for Power suite 2009. Buyer beware … the cost is too high!!

You can go to regedit and delete the registry key
Click start/ run/ type> regedit
Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Uniblue
Right click the Uniblue reg folder and delete.

To just stop it from loading at startup, Click start/ run/ type> msconfig
Under the Startup tab, uncheck Uniblue or Registry Booster.

That was from an earlier post. I followed his instructions, and it worked like a charm. I also found other stuff in there that did not delete on the add,remove.
But you have to start your computer in safe mode.

Yes, Bill. I did just buy a new computer. Maybe if I had bought your book instead of Uniblue Power Suite 2009 I would have had better luck. After all I am just your average computer user, maybe the novice, trying to learn. I am a living, breathing person … I may be misinformed, and uneducated, but I am not a liar. My facts are as I stated. They are my facts the way I see them. My frustration real.

What I’m agitated about is your claim that the software turned your computer into a brick. There’s no other way to take a statement such as you made, viz…

> I am out the cost of a brand new computer.
> High price to pay for Power suite 2009.

That’s complete crap and we both know it.

There was a time, many years ago, when it was possible to write low-level assembler programs that could physically destroy monitors and computers, but I don’t know if that’s even possible now with modern hardware. But I do know it’s not even remotely possible with Power Suite 2009 or any of its components.

You may be moving on, but the nightmare isn’t over, because you have clearly learnt nothing from your experience or from the more informed contributions to this message topic. With that attitude there are many more nightmares in your future.

Melanie’s story reminds me of an article I read a while ago. A woman sold her car (for a pittance) claiming it was “completely unusable”, that the manufacturer refused to replace it under warranty, and she tried (unsuccessfully) to mount a legal case, so she simply moved on and bought another different type of vehicle. Investigations turned up the fact that she’d put PETROL in her DIESEL vehicle. Then tried to start and drive it. Who was to blame??. The petrol supplier? The diesel supplier? The auto manufacturer? Perhaps one could argue that the nozzles should not be able to fit the wrong type of vehicle (in fact a diesel can’t be put in petrol tank, but not the converse). But nothing’s perfect. The real analogy here though, is that this woman messed things up, then tried to blame others, then sold a perfectly good vehicle (her problem could have been fixed, although it’s expensive), bought another vehicle, and “moved on”. Sound familiar Melanie? Maybe your computer did crash & burn, but you clearly know so little that you have no idea why. Knowing nothing is not a problem – puts you in the same boat as many of us. But the problem for many of us in this forum is asserting things that simply can’t be substantiated.

Opinion: Melanie had a problem and was upset and was looking for help. Bill and his helper, Safemate, very nicely made her feel like a fool. Well, Bill, that is a very nice marketing tool for “Hacker’s Nightmare”…an overpriced and too wordy (and probably outdated) literary submission.

I doubt Bill Healy would be bothered responding to your totally wrong accusations because he’s already responded to Melanie’s posts in detail. But as I am a customer and follower of Bill’s and as I have read every message on this page, I think I’m qualified to answer you.

Every single point in your message is wrong.

> Melanie had a problem and was upset and was looking for help.

No. Melanie wasn’t just looking for help. She made an accusation against a product which as Bill explained could not possibly have the effect she described. He also challenged her to justify her accusation, a challenge which she has not accepted. People looking for help don’t make impossible false accusations and use terms like “take the crap off my computer”. She was confrontational from the outset, she was challenged, and she was unable to back up her accusation.

> “Hacker’s Nightmare”…an overpriced

Your own words tell those of us who own this fantastic e-book that you have never read it and know nothing about it. Even if the one book was all you got for your money it would be worth every cent and more. What you really get for your purchase makes it dirt cheap. Now that I know how valuable it is I would willingly pay many times the asking price. No one should go online without it.

> and too wordy

My latest version of The Hacker’s Nightmare is 37 chapters and 13 appendices in 476 pages, and yet “too wordy” is the last thing you could say about it. If you bothered to do any research at all you’d find numerous comments around the Web about how well Bill translates technical topics into language that ordinary computer users can understand. I’ve bought a lot of information products on the Web over the years and The Hacker’s Nightmare is at the very top of my list of most useful and most referred to.

> (and probably outdated) literary submission.

More proof that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Not only is the e-book updated regularly but the members-only website has a section where Bill regularly posts updates.

This is another point that’s already been well covered, but since you seem to have missed the point in every other respect I can only ask the question: So you’re another one who won’t accept good advice unless someone begs you nicely to take it? Careful magboiler, your IQ is showing.

Thanks, Sandy, for your thoughtful comments. I have reviewed them. I will continue to think about your arguments, and while you may think my opinions are unintelligent, I am entitled to them and stand by them.

I do have experience in research (mostly chemical) and in doing research one has to be mindful of the cost versus the benefit.

I am sure, in looking at reviews, Bill Hely’s contributions are, very likely, extremely worthwhile to some. They are no doubt very intellectually stimulating, but, in my case,I have other interests that have a higher priority for my time and effort. I use my computer as a tool (and, often, not necessary tool) to the satisfactory achievement of my life’s pursuits. As such, I take steps to insure, with minimal time spent, that the tool works properly…not unlike other tools, such as: dishwashers, cameras, vehicles, etc.

Have you tried downloading and running Spybot Search and Destroy, or AdAware from Lavasoft? These two are probably pretty much the best free anti-malware programs out there; and might well solve your problem.

But the greatly self adulated Pied Piper “Messiah” of this board says this is the best.proggie.everrrr! So it is impossible that anyone ever had a problem with it or still has any issues with it whatsoever! Impossible I say!

Well, I contacted tech support and got a link to a much newer version than the one they had on their website that I was instructed to download and reinstall to uninstall the old version. 9 megabytes difference in the files, that’s probably why it wouldn’t uninstall the old version when I tried to install a new one to override it. Anyway, I still have no explanation of how this thing got on my folks computer. They denied installing it, and it didn’t come with an uninstaller. It’s still quite fishy. I’d advise people to stay away from this software. The fact that they actually do employ some of these questionable advertising strategies still leads me to believe that there was a rogue advertiser involved in this. But who knows… I’m just happy to get it off my folks computer so it doesn’t bother them each time they start their computer. Tech support was rather quick, though. They get a point for that.

I bought Uniblue after seeing it praised on PCWorld, because my computer was slow and crashed often. After using Uniblue (which removed a couple thou registry errors) my PC no longer crashes and is faster. I use it about once a week. Before I use it, computer slow. After I use it, computer fast. I’m not a techie at all, but it seems to me the product works fine. And I’ve had no problems with it at all. Now, Norton 360 on the other hand…

That is wonderful Julie. Can you tell me who you prayed to, because I’d like that kind of miracle for my computer. (I hate Norton, but I find it interesting how Uniblue defenders consistently trash Norton. That is not really necessary. Norton will do that for you.)

I dont know where this stuff came from but I can’t get it off my computer. Every time I boot up it does a bogus scan that show over 300 issues. Very strange that they are forcing us to buy there products for $19.95 . I tried to delete the issue but add remove programs sees the stuff but says it’s not installed and cant be deleted. Any that can help please contact me.
Thanks

I have used Uni-Blue Power Suite for the past two years and am more than satisfied. It has solved many problems incurred on some of my programs and my PC runs efficiently. As to people complaining about the free scan – it pays to actually READ something before clicking. I am boggled at the apparent ignorance of some people. I am, by the way, not a professional computer user. Just an average person – and I’m 70 years old!
I have no hesitation in recommending Uniblue to anyone.

That is great Don. The message that Uniblue needs to hear is that Uniblue is communicateing (intentionally or unintentionally) the message that Registry Booster can help distressed system. It states it will remove registry errors (not some errors). If the perception persists among buyers that the program will provide material support for a severely distressed or infected system. Then clearly Uniblue has a responsibility to change their message. Yet they have know this and they have not.

I do not find anything at all extraordinary about a 70 year old comprehending something that a 30-year old cannot. I don’t think a person is automatically imbecilic at any give age. Neither do I apply supernatural intelligence to the young. I am puzzled at the importance you place on your age. I have to wonder if Uniblue is not employing the same tried old trick that Benjamin Franklin used in his newspaper (he regularly expressed his opinions in letters to the editor using phony names).

I began reading comments here while Reg Booster was downloading
and quickly realized this program is NOT what Ryan PUSSY reports. Folks who run this site should fully disclose ALL the facts about this so-called free program. The paid version may be excellent, but misleading folks into thinking the trial version does anything meaningful is scam-tastic! Sites and reviews that don’t tell the whole story are really just whores for the products they tout. Can this site be taken seriously under these conditions?
THANKS to all of you who saved me time & aggravation.

I don’t know what it takes to get through to some of you, but I’ll give it one more try.

Someone accused me of a tireless defence of Uniblue. With regard to Uniblue-the-company, for the most part I really couldn’t care less about how they are perceived by anyone else. Other than recognize their representatives’ obvious willingness to respond helpfully, sensibly and courteously on this page (often rudely rebuffed by the people they are trying to help), I’ve made no attempt to defend Uniblue-the-company. Apart from what I’ve read on their website and my personal experience with a couple of their products, I know nothing about them.

My concern is to do my best to prevent genuine, open-minded information/solution seekers from being misled by the mindless crap being dealt out by the liars, the fakes, the agitators and the terminally stupid, as well as by some who are themselves simply genuinely misguided and misinformed.

Here are a series of indisputable facts:

On a healthy, uninfected Windows XP Pro system…

– RegistryBooster installs just fine.
– RegistryBooster will uninstall just fine.
– Uniblue offers a free registry scan and provides exactly that.
– Nowhere on their website does Uniblue offer a free cleanup of all detected anomalies.
– RegistryBooster offers user-settable options to (a) start RegistryBooster with Windows, or not (b) start RegistryBooster minimised in the System Tray, or not. Your choice. If you don’t want it in your System Tray, deselect that option. If you don’t want it starting with Windows, deselect that option.

As for the conditions I stipulated…

“healthy, uninfected”: It’s very clear from many of the posts on this page that many of the complainers are working with systems that don’t qualify. As any IT professional who sees a lot of systems will tell you, that’s quite normal. Not forgivable, not acceptable — but very common. It’s also very common for people to refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions or lack thereof, and to want to lay the blame for any problems somewhere else.

“Windows XP Pro system”: We still do not use Windows Vista in-house, nor is it likely that we ever will. Likewise for the majority of our clients. And as we deal exclusively with business people, we do not encounter or have any need to test products on Windows XP Home.

The problem with listening to the advice of anyone in a forum, or on a blog response page like this, is that for the most part you don’t know who you’re listening to. Note how many of the more critical posters are unwilling to identify themselves. I’m not globally condemning the use of pen names, but it certainly doesn’t promote credibility on a contentious issue. If you’re a relatively advanced computer user yourself it’s usually not too difficult to spot the hopeless cases who are the victims of their own incompetence. Experts can pick them easily. But if you’re a novice yourself you really need to know that it’s accurate advice or soundly based opinions that you are listening to.

So how to do that?

By all means read all of the contributions to this page, but keep an open mind. Even a novice will be able to identify many posts that simply have no credibility and all. It should also be fairly easy to identify contributors who probably do know what they’re talking about.

But don’t stop at that. You need to get the informed opinions of many people you can easily identify as almost certainly having a higher level of credibility and expertise. One fairly reliable way to do that would be to conduct a Google search with the following terms: Uniblue RegistryBooster review

You’ll come up with plenty of results and not all of them will be 100% positive, which is a good thing — you want to know both the cons as well as the pros.

Note also that this entire discussion is the result of a positive review written by another expert in the person of David Risley, and David’s summation has been agreed with by a number of others here who it is reasonable to assume (from the contents of their posts) themselves possess some degree of expertise.

Now the really puzzling thing is this:

How on earth did David Risley and all those other reviewers — authors who it is reasonable to assume possess some better-than-average level of technical expertise — how did they all expect that they could lie to and deceive you about this utility? Do you wonder what their motives must have been?

Surely all those positive reviews must be part of some grand conspiracy to get you to “mess up” your PC.

I notice that WinZip — one of the oldest, most used and most trusted software publishers on the planet — are now promoting RegistryBooster 2 as “… the safest and most trusted solution to clean and optimize your system…” [ http://www.winzip.com/edm/200712_registry_booster2.htm ]

Can you believe it? One of the most respected publishers in computerdom has apparently gone over to the dark side! They’ve joined forces with all those malicious, deranged reviewers who want to scam you into wrecking your PC with their false conclusions.

Fortunately a number of the learned folks herein have been able to warn the rest of us simpletons about all the insidious things that RegistryBooster will do to your computer.

I purchased Registry Booster earlier this year. Recently my computer crashed and I had to have another hard disc installed. I lost all my programs. I have the order number and serial number etc. for my purchase. How do I arrange to re-install it?

Graham, you are asking in the wrong place — this is not a Uniblue site. You will have to wait for a Uniblue representative to happen by, as they do occasionally, and hope they spot your query, but why wait?

The logical place to make that inquiry is at Uniblue support, where you’ll find one of the FAQ questions is: “I need to reinstall my products, where can I download them from?”.http://www.liutilities.com/support/

You know, Bill. For someone who is trying to sell his wares. You seem to look down on us little people with contempt.
Maybe you could try some honey to catch us flies. But no, you use vinegar.
Your advice here is sage, to me at least.
But you, and Sharron should stop talking to us, the people you are trying to sell P.C. problems to, as stupid.
We just want simple answers to complex problems. We do not need to be treated like children.

Hey Brad, what’s your agenda? For almost 2 months you’ve been hanging around here contributing nothing except criticisms and knocking other peoples contributions. Name me one person who has contributed more useful information in this entire thread than Bill Healy.

I challenged you once before to go over to his blog and argue !facts! with him there. But strangely, there’s been no sign of you.

Do I sound like a fan? Well I’m happy to agree. I’m grateful to anyone who so freely contributes to my education.

And by the way, if you purchased some of Bill’s “wares” as I did after meeting him here, you’d be a lot smarter by now.

Ryan Passey here… I wrote this article and since the end of 2006, I have pretty much been MIA. I get the email updates all the time about the comments about this product. I’m going to stay true to my original article. I still use this product to date. I haven’t had any problems and on top of that, I have actually had to use it to restore my registry after other problems, caused by other unrelated software. You guys need to give it a break, seriously. I love this site and the information it provides… that is why I wanted to help contribute when I did (two years ago). The moral stands, if you don’t have anything of relevance to say, don’t say it at all. I also don’t approve of JEFF, who went out of the way to unnecessarily tarnish my surname; that is immature and exactly the hostility that turned me away from this site progressively.

If you have a beef with the review, then email me (rpassey@pcmech.com). But, if you just are misunderstanding how to operate a computer, and what software does when installed, then I can be of little or no help… independent research will tell you that software will, in itself, during the installation process, create registry entries, and many other software will also add itself to the start-up list (see Norton, for example).

The fact of that matter is that I was to review this product in terms of its effectiveness. It did what it claimed to do, and I noted my personal findings for my personal computers. Who is to say that it might not have a larger positive impact on some computers, while on others (such as brand new ones) have a rather minor and unnoticeable impact?

also note:
“Adaware from lavasoft didn’t seem to find the problem, nor does AVG8, or Avira Antivir. Just for the record…” – HD

HD; this is because this product is from a respectable and long standing company… the product isn’t malware by definition; look at all the other programs that generate processes that run at start up, etc… again, see antivirus software.

Thank you all for reading and visiting the site. I’m probably going back MIA for a while, but I do appreciate that you all have read and commented on my article.

The program should not install itself as part of the start menu. The free version should come with an explicit uninstall option. The free version should not report myriad errors then allow the user the option of repairing no more than 15 entries.

The whole of the free version is designed not to encourage, but to force, purchases. I’m computer-literate and I knew how to uninstall the program once I discovered what it was doing but I consider the marketing vicious.

The marketing style may appear to some to be “vicious”; but this isn’t an uncommon marketing tactic. It is, however, a tactic that has become exploited by malicious software vendors in an attempt to get their customer/victims to install malware on their computers.

I’m not for a second myself inplying that Uniblue Registry Booster is malware as has been insinuated elsewhere in this thread. However the same tactic that Uniblue use to market Registry Booster is also used to market less-reputable programs.

In my younger computing days I was asked by one malware vendor to download their program and run it to see how many threats it detected that my usual software missed. It dropped a trojan and numerous pieces of spyware onto my hard disk; “found” half of them, removed five of them, told me there were more, and that I’d have to pay through the nose for this wonderful piece of software to remove all of them. I’d just reinstalled Windows (98 SE), so there was no way that all that lot had collectively accumulated over the yeaqrs of usage. Fortunately I knew how to remove them myself – So using AdAware, Spybot, and manually removing the trojan by killing its process and deleting its registry entry, I cleaned the machine.

The malware vendor mentioned wasn’t Uniblue, and had no connections with Uniblue. I am rather surprised,though,that Uniblue use a similar tactic to that of malware vendors to market their non-malware product.

Uniblue aren’t the only ones who do it though: PC Pitstop use a similar tactic to sell their tregistry cleaner, “Opt6imize 2″. Theirs offers a free scan, which detects various registry issues, categorises them, and rather than removing a limited number of them, it insists that you pay to register the software before it cleans any of them. if you don’t want to do so their program can be removed via Add/Remove Programs.
I use PC Pitstop Optimize 2 currently. – I prefer the GUI to Uniblue’s; that’s why.

The reason I’m saying this is to show that Uniblue aren’t the only ones with legitimate non-malefic software to use that kind of tactic.

Personally I think it’s a buit of an iffy tactic; but it must work or both Uniblue and PC Pitstop wouldn’t use it.

On a similar note I have issues with the modus operandii of Steve Jobs: But when you consider that Steve Jobs has millions of dollars in assets and I don’t, it kind of makes my complaints pale into insignificance doesn’t it?

I’m replying to this message against my better judgement for the last thing I want to start is a flame war. Yet, without attacking you personally, I must say that I regard your comments as attempting to justify unjustifiable marketing tactics. Just because such tactics are widely practiced does not make them any less reprehensible. You’re using the standard teenager’s plaint: “Everybody else does it.”

My point is that the amount of free fixes is tiny compared to what the program says the errors are, in my case over 2,000. It would be best if the register cleaner offered no free fixes at all.

I seem to have touched some nerves. I stated my opinion, no one else need agree. The length of this discussion of Uniblue indicates that I’m not the only one put off by marketing that are at best inept and at worse malicious.

Although I am not suggesting that URB 2009 is in fact malware; neither am I saying that it isn’t as I’ve never tried it myself, there is a pretty standard initial procedure for cleaning up malware and removing suspected infections.

Many computers running Windows may exhibit issues and behave strangely for reasons other than a malware infection which may lead the user to suspect a malware infection. File-system corruption possibly. Perhaps before embarking on any malware-removal procedure, it would be an idea to check for and remedy any hard-disk issues in respect of data corruption.

A scan with your existing antivirus software, along with an online virus scan, Adaware, Spybot, is the first line of attack against malware. The Windows Live One Care scanner is a good online source for an extra scan, although its effectiveness may be questionable in certain areas.

If nothing is detected and/or all malware removed, yet the problem continues, a manual approach may be called for:

To acheive this one must be able to discern between Windows processes as well as installed non-malefic software running processes and rogue processes. Also when editing the registry one should be extremely careful. Back up the registry (System Restore) before opening regedit.

Use a process-viewer program to view all running processes. Identify any running processes from rogue malware and kill those processes.

Find the registry key related to the malware process and delete it.

Other than that I am unable to suggest anything else remotely at this time.

Thanks for your suggestions Sharon, but independently of the state of my computer I saw some observations concerning Uniblue.
1) No uninstaller is part of the package. (But on web site “non working” solution).
2) Using standard windows de-sinstaller left traces of Uniblue.
3) Killing Uniblue key with specialized tools (Ccleaner I.E) is ineffective cause after reboot the key reappear.
4) RegistryBooster.exe still alive somewhere in the system.
For this reasons I put the name of ZombieWare to Uniblue RegistryBooster 2009.

It appears that you may have picked up a piece of malware calling itself Registry Booster 2009?

If you delete a malware registry key while its process is still running; there is a chance that the process will instantly re-write the registry key without any notification: This is why it is important to kill the process before deleting the registry key.

Somehow this reply went unnoticed for whatever reason. Apologies. I’ve just noticed it now almost a month later. (I must say this thread is ongoing in a rather crowded fashion. lol.)

From what you say, if I’ve understood you correctly, it appears that you killed the .exe process for the main program but not the .exe process for part of the registration sequence.

I’m still of the opinion that this is a piece of malware that is NOT from Uniblue, which is trying to pass itself off as Uniblue Registry Booster for the purpose of phishing for details and robbing you of the registration fee. I may be wrong but I doubt it. Maybe a hacker reverse engineered the Registry Booster trial and rewrote bits of it it? – That’s speculation based on logical guesswork. I suggest running Adaware from Lavasoft to check for trojans and spyware that it may have installed.

From one of Sharon’s posts, “If you delete a malware registry key while its process is still running; there is a chance that the process will instantly re-write the registry key without any notification: This is why it is important to kill the process before deleting the registry key.”

Hey Sharon, I just want to nominate you for poster girl. Your posts are informative and you are not here to support or attack. This kind of impartial discussion really helps. Thank you and keep up the good work!!

Yes I do try to remain impartial if at all possible. The way I see it is that if we start bickering and falling out with each other, then not only does it not solve the problem(s) under discussion, but it also creates further problems of bad feeling of a personal nature, which are counterproductive to the topic under debate.

The overall tone of the thread is negative- fairly or not. I have had enough trouble with trials in the past to tread very cautiously, especially in regards to my registry. Sorry Uniblue, but I have decided not to get involved with your product. Although I have read good reviews, something is “getting lost in translation” with you and your potential clients. You should come up with a better way to promote RB. No I don’t have a suggestion. Tough spot to be in. Would consider RB under better circumstances. Moving on……..

I couldn’t agree more with this review. I have tried alot of various Registry optimization software. Several actually damaged my registry or were simply lacking. Uniblue Registry Booster is simply the best. It does a fabulous job at optimizing my Vista OS and has never caused a problem. If you want a reliable Registry program that does what is supposed to without any issues, then you want Registry Booster.

Metalogic, that’s pretty much the same conclusion I came to after extensive testing, and Registry Booster is now my Registry cleaner of choice and the one I recommend to all my clients. None of us have had a single problem.

While I have the advantage of several decades of professional IT experience behind me, that doesn’t apply to my clients. Of course they have me to call on if they need help, but they also have been given the general training to enable them to install and use such tools intelligently.

There are a couple of conditions that I always recommend, and it’s very apparent that a lot of people who have problems with utility software don’t follow those recommendations.

Recommendation #1: Before installing *ANY* software always reboot the computer, then close any applications that start automatically with Windows, before installing the new software, and always reboot after the installation is complete, whether the software tells you to not.

Recommendation #2: Always reboot the computer before running a registry clean, close any applications that start automatically with Windows, make sure the Registry Cleaner takes a registry backup before running the scan, and again always reboot after the scan/cleanup is complete.

The negative posts about Uniblue’s Registry Booster are simply bogus. I have been using it now for over a year with nothing but positive results. Besides, the negative comments posted here are mainly from people who are sour about the trial version of which they claim they cannot uninstall? Actually, if you read the semantics (between the lines) what they are really sour about is not getting a full registry cleaning for free. For those people that are willing to pay for a fine registry optimization program, trust me, I highly recommend Uniblue’s Registry Booster. The people here that are making a BIG issue over having uninstallation problems are either pure novices or smear artists whom set out to destroy the reputation of fine software developers like Uniblue. This is a truly wicked thing when you consider the hard work that goes into creating such a viable program. Again, just ignore these people, I can tell you from personal experience this software is legit and does what it is designed to do and does it extremely well.

Metalogic, don’t pay too much attention to Brad. He’s been a serial knocker here for a couple of months now.

What he can’t come to grips with is the question, of what value are most of those negative assessments? As has been pointed out a number of times by people who are obviously more experienced than the average, most of the stuff ups are probably self-inflicted through ignorance.

It’s not the quantity of endorsements that matters, but their source and quality.

I had a similar decision to make some time back. Either listen to the negatives and move on, or listen to a few people who seemed to have a lot more experience than the rest.

It was Bill Healys many sensible and informative contributions that convinced me to give Uniblue a try. I’m now a very happy user of RegistryBooster.

Hi Sandy,
I fully understand what Brad is attempting here. He either has some issues
of which he wants to drag everyone else into, or he is what is known as a
“player” and gets a kick out of trying to destroy the reputation of a
company. It’s an ego power trip basically. Much akin to the terrorist
mindset. I would be willing to bet that he is a “serial” negativity blogger
elsewhere around the web as well. Anyone that frequents forums has seen his
type before. The problem is, which is annoying in the least, is that when
someone such as he attacks a fine company like yours, you have to rise up on
behalf of your defense. You cannot allow him to make these felonius assaults
without retort, which takes up precious time. He knows this, which is why he
does not relent. What helps, is when outside people such as myself expose
his bogus claims. I hope my statements have helped. I can truly attest that
your Registry Booster has saved me alot of grief. Thank you and please keep
up the good work. ~ Brian a.k.a. Metalogic

Sandy,
Right. I realized that after reading the posts more extensively. By the way, slam-dunk on the “teen dropout” analysis. I was thinking the same. That said, I am weary with this juvenile myself. Take care, later.

I feel Brad’s pain but I do wish Brad would stick to the subject. The subject is not Sandy (you don’t really know Sandy).

For this forum to be of value, we need respondents who can articulate opinions without resorting to personal attacks. This forum is about a program. Not about people. We can respond to opinions, but not to people.

When we feel that a response to our post is met with less respect than we would like, we need to respond with a clear and even statement of our feelings. There is no need to respond with abusive language. Brad illustrated this very effectively on December 30th. I am sorry he undid the respect he earned there with subsequent posts.

When Sandy responds to Brad, even indirectly, with a personal response, Sandy is joining an unsavory conversation. Further, I don’t think Sandy or any of us need to exclude others.

Thomas, I apologize to everyone. I’m sorry I lost your respect.
But I think it’s pretty clear to most of us. We just don’t like how the program is run.
To those of you who like? I’m happy for you.
But, to those of us who don’t? Why did they write the program to stay hidden in a folder until stumbled upon?
By making the uninstall so hard to figure out, they come across as hiding something. And that in return makes people suspicious.

Not to worry Brad. You have not lost my respect. I appreciate your response to this. You have confirmed my belief that you can be a responsible and intelligent participant. We just have to respond assertively when people respond with personal attacks. Everyone here has valuable input if they simply clear their minds of hostility.

I hope you continue to participate. I value your diversity of opinion.

Hello Thomas,
Brad’s complaint concerning Uniblue’s Registry Booster is bogus. I know this, because before I purchased Registry Booster I to ran the trial version of which I was able to uninstall on my WinXP OS without difficulty and with no remaining files in my registry. If Brad had indeed experienced some sort of issue with Registry Booster, the proper procedure would have beeen to contact the developer with any inquiries, rather than launch a smear campaign against them on internet forums with juvenile rants. This is very disrespectful and unwaranted behaviour of which he displayed with Sandy as well, showing his true colors. If you wish to sympathize with “Brad’s pain” that’s your perogative. Personally, i think he is nothing more than an instigator.

Thanks for the reply Metalogic. I might as easily said, “I sense Brad’s pain.” The thing is, an effective forum requires mutual respect and inclusion. If you think Brad is an instigator, engage him in a meaningful conversation. If neither of you have hidden objectives, you will both benefit.

The bottom line is to avoid escalation, treat everyone with respect and avoid personal attacks even with attackers. You can easily address Brad’s posts by addressing specific issues. When we respond to personal attacks in-kind, we are part of the problem.

Mr. Tomas,
I just realized that I mispelled your name prior, apologies. I completely understand your protocol in logic here, of which I try and practice at forums myself. However, I must confess that I am only human and do at times allow emotion to get the better of me. I became “hot under the collar” when Brad began railing demeaning insults at a woman (Sandy). Something of which, and I am sure you would agree, is just plain uncalled for. I will try to practice more discipline in the future. I agree with your analogy, as displaying this sort of character sets an example for people like this. And whether or not they learn from it, should not be my concern. Thank you for your admonishment Tomas. It is well taken.

Approaching this with an open mind I clicked all the boxes and ran the recommended system scan. On my 4 Gig system about 37 MB of editable files were identified. That doesn’t seem very significant to me. I was prevented from going further by: (1) Uniblue’s insistence that I purchase. Fair enough but no price was quoted and no assessment offered of the likely benefit to my system. (2)When I tried anyhow to run the purchase screen my 3mB broadband twice failed.
I’m pretty unimpressed by all this and don’t propose to go further. Any comments to

You’re kidding, right? Let’s take a point by point look at your open-minded assessment:

> about 37 MB of editable files were identified.

Huh? What do you mean “editable files”?

Anyway, finding a bunch of errors is exactly what it’s all about. Taken as a figure by itself, the actual number of errors discovered is fairly meaningless.

> I was prevented from going further by: (1) Uniblue’s
> insistence that I purchase.

How very unreasonable of them.

> no price was quoted

The price is on their website where you downloaded the trial from. Where else would you expect to find it?

> no assessment offered of the likely benefit to my system.

Obviously any “benefits” are going to depend very much on the current state of an individual computer system. However, contrary to your claim, the Uniblue website does list a number of likely consequences.

> When I tried anyhow to run the purchase screen
> my 3mB broadband twice failed.

And this would be whose fault? Uniblue are responsible for your connection glitches?

Hi Milo, your frustration is not unusual, Sandy’s umbrage withstanding. You probably came to the program with a distressed system, as I did. I was equally disappointed when the program did not resolve my system problem.

I felt tricked into buying the program. I consider their tactic it certainly seems deceptive. I don’t know why though. They don’t seem to promise more than they deliver. Perhaps it is because I really wanted to fix my system and Uniblue deliberately responds to searches on the crisis messages from Windows. I suspect they deliberately reel us in, and in doing so, they cause us to believe they can and will help.

My system reported registry problems before degenerating into the usual pre-format and reinstall coma. I ran the registry cleaner which found many problems and claimed to fix them, but never found the problem my system complained of. I paid for the program without understanding what it could do. I figure I got what I deserved.

Sandy is correct is saying that the program does not really promise more than it delivers. However, I’ve expressed my opinion to UniBlue that they do themselves no credit if they knowingly profit from unreasonable expectations.

I think Uniblue and Sandy need to realize that if hundreds, dare I say thousands of people perceive the Uniblue message differently than Uniblue intends, Uniblue should work on more effective communication. It is useless for UniBlue or Sandy (Sandy assumes a heroic defense of Uniblue but denies any attachment) to defend their communication if it is consistently misunderstood.

I like the Uniblue people. They have always been respectful to me. Yet I wonder why they persist in this marketing strategy. That however is their business. I would dearly like to know how their program can help me.

I think is can be useful in identifying register issues. If I had time (I use it up this way), I would like to learn to correct these registry problems manually. I’ve heard two seemingly informed but radically different opinions of this program: the program is good, if identifies and fixes registry problems, the program is bad, it can’t fix the real problems and a healthy system does not need registry cleaner to fix it. In the final analysis, I think I need a Mac. They don’t need registry cleaners, do they?

Oh, and Sandy, your dogged loyalty is admirable, but please go a little easier on those who don’t share your devotion. There is no point is shooing them away from this site. It would be really nice if you would ask questions and try to get at real issues. It is OK to address expectations, but you might ask what Milo expected and why he expected that. You might even help him.

Thanks to you Thomas for your reply. None to Sandy for his intemperate aggressiveness. Happily my PC has no real problem. I just wanted to clock my broadband speed and the Uniblue stuff came at me from nowhere. Reading some of the other responses I’m glad I opted out.
By the way I’m no geek, just a pensioner looking to improve my online experience/

“I think Uniblue and Sandy need to realize that if hundreds, dare I say thousands of people perceive the Uniblue message differently than Uniblue intends, Uniblue should work on more effective communication.”

Answer: If they clarified things, they would risk selling less copies of the product they’re hawking. Lack-of-clarity in advertising (also referred to as deception in some circles) is as old as mankind itself. Probably goes back to the day women started using rudimentary makeup some-odd thousand years ago and the art has progressed from there. Another way to look at it is; theater is fantasy and makeup is a prop. Part of the illusion.

“I like the Uniblue people. They have always been respectful to me. Yet I wonder why they persist in this marketing strategy.”

Well I have two dell dimesion 9100’s about 2yrs old both busted and I have just reactivated an overclockers pc from 05 and it is working a bit cranky but working…Ihave bought all kinds of registry cleaners anti virus stuff scanners and all sorts they all eventually dissapoint…must have spent over £500 in the last 10 yrs desperate/drunk or both…the truth is you get nowt for nowt…and even when you spend money you still get problems I have 2 laptops an oldish Tosh that works well if slow and a relatively ne Packard Bell with all the bells and whistlea but taht is a machione taht has never worked seamlessly I always used to have thinkpads they were built like tanks slow but you could go swimming in the briney take em to war(almost)and the tp would carry on clunking on! I recently looked at buying a new laptop and a desktop power pc to get edge the bill wwould be a minimum of £5000 or with everything a boy really wants from his toys ie max bragging rights the bill could be about £10-12,000 think I am joking go do the custom build on novatech or mesh or whoever…the reality is that every time I upgrade with new machines I am astonished at how little hot hardware costs…the problem is all about software or at least 99% is MS is bug laden…the web is alive with malware…dont get me started about stuff like Norton…in comparison to that stuff Uniblue are heroes…except they are trying to haxck a living so they are a just a better version of a very bad bunch…headed up by Bill’s MS mob…but what would life be like without our pc’s and the web/net or whatever…my fault if I let the wife and five grandchildren loose on my kit I am typing this on a sticky dell pad that some star in my family has spilled coke brandy bailey coffee and tea over…where is that wireless gaming one I bought last year? Someone has borrowed it think I might plug in that 15 year old Logitech that had a nice key action. This is like a 1950’s Adler Portable AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

I find it simply amazing that UniBlue’s product and another I found on the net (in the same google search), are (except for colors) exactly alike! The screen layout, the “options” down the left, the wording and order of every “class” of item being scanned, even the results pages are identical. What are the chances??? It seems to me that SOMEONE has remarketed their product to avoid the “heat”. After reading all the messages here, I have a good idea who that is.

I’m not sure of the google searches you have made? But it is the classic, “Long Scare” tactic.
You have X amount of suspect files on your computer. We can clean these up for “Y” amount of money. The end result will be a “Z” cask in our account.

I tried the demo but also had the registry backed up prior to install. when I figured out that it was just a come-on, I removed it with System mechanic pro’s ‘uninstall’ which removed every instance from it from my system. Not a big deal as far as I’m concerned. Oh yeah, who is this Brad clown and why is he so hostile?….Geez grow up kid!

hi. I have been having trouble trying to install the new powersuite 2009 . I tried the work around uniblue have in their support faq but to no avail. I installed .net framework 3.5 updated it with the sp1, tried to install uniblue powersuite 2009 again and i get the same result. It starts to install but immediatly after 20 second it says it has installed (all i see on the screen before it being installed are the words registrybooster 2009 installing then hey presto its installed and on some occasion it goes further with some text about authenticating but it still cuts out as if something is preventing it from installing all the way but tell s me succesefully installed). The end result is i go to launch the programs and i get the same error over and over again “could not find registrybooster 2009 installed path” now i have tried uninstalling them and uninstalling the .netframework over 8 times and reinstalling them but i still get the error. also i noticed when uninstalling i get something about not having .netframework installed when infact i do. It is very annoying , Anyway i sent a customer service ticket and have not recieved a reply and it has been about 3 days now . I have now sent a request for a refund . Im hoping that any uniblue employess browsing this site see this pos tmaybe they will take action .

I used Uniblue Registry Booster and have no issues using it. Sometimes my computer seems slow, so I deleted a few utilities with Revo-Uninstaller, not the defunct Windows Uninstaller.

Uniblue Registry Booster keeps my registered user number in the registry, which is no problem, and I have re-installed it a few times to do some cleanup work without having to input the Registration a second time.

Bottom lines, Uniblue Registry Booster is a good program and if you don’t like it simply uninstall it properly with the right utility.

I see others have found that the uninstall experience with this proggie is lacking, still in 2009.

It also appears that negative experiences are being censored now as I see one written by someone that came in email but does not appear as the latest post in the thread, as if their post was pulled as soon as it was posted.

“It also appears that negative experiences are being censored now as I see one written by someone that came in email but does not appear as the latest post in the thread, as if their post was pulled as soon as it was posted.”

That’s because those were replies to other comments. They are in their respective places. Not in the queue.

muhaha i find it funny that ppl in 2009 are still purchasing such programs. Registry scanners and cleaners WILL NOT speed up your computer, fix the problems! the max effect you can get is to get a startup speed boost by whopping 1 sec. Have you seen ANYWHERE a test that shows how faster/quicker a pc is after a registry repair? no? thats cause they do nothing that is useful. They display big red X if they found “errors” (those errors mean that there are unused entries in your registry. these have 0 bad effects). And when you make a scan they show up nice green checkmarks that your registry is clean. Besides the placebo effect that whoah now its clean it should run better they do nothing. If you really want your comp faster reinstall windows, remove running programs, or upgrade your pc.
An it student writing his final exam from microsoft operating systems

While I can’t say you’re wrong exactly, you are on the wrong track. Despite the advertising that always seems to focus heavily on “performance improvement”, that’s not the prime purpose of a Registry Cleaner.

Depending on individual circumstances, an improvement in performance *MAY* be the consequence of a thorough cleanup with a good Registry Cleaner — or it may not. And as you say, quite often when there is a performance improvement it is fairly insignificant. But that’s not always the case.

As to your claim that Registry Cleaners are not necessary, that’s a matter of ongoing contention amongst people with a much greater understanding of the Windows architecture than you or I. The aforementioned Mark Russinovich has long been one of the top names in that respect, and he has publicly stated that Registry Cleaners will continue to have a role until most applications have moved to the .NET Framework platform.

> An it student writing his final exam from microsoft operating systems

After you’ve added a few decades of practical experience to your MCSE (or whatever it is you’re doing) you’ll realize that not everything Microsoft wants you to learn is the gospel truth .

Wow, there is a lot of negative feedback here.
I had a problem trying to install some kids software and couldn’t get passed an error, so I installed the free Registry Booster Scan. It found 333 errors, so I chose the option to fix 15 errors for free and it resolved the main problem that I originally was looking to get rid of; Now I have 318 errors left.
So, I was just about to purchase the full version to get rid of the remaining errors until I found this site with many unhappy customers. Now I will look for another solution because this many people can’t be wrong about Uniblue.
Thanks!

Come on Bruce! You tried a utility program to see if it would fix a particular problem for you.

It *DID* fix that problem.

But you’re going to be talked out of it by a bunch of inexperienced people who don’t understand that, in most cases, *THEY* are the cause of the problems they are encountering.

> Now I will look for another solution because this
> many people can’t be wrong about Uniblue.

There are millions of misinformed beginners on the WWW; here you see but a small sample. The key to getting useful information off the Internet is learning who to listen to and, just as importantly, who to ignore. You decide which is which with research.

@ Bruce, Give ccleaner a try. Just Google it. It’s free, if you don’t like it? It uninstalls easily.
But please, take the tutorial first. There are mistakes you can make with anything that changes your Registry.

I did a Google search, and I figured I would share this with everyone here. I’ve watched Download the Story of The Internet, “Very Informative by the way” Mark Andresson called Windows, a poorly designed set of debugged device drivers. Marc Andresson was from Netscape fame.
So back to my Google search. Here is what I found out about Macs.
Quote;There is no registry, or anything like a registry, on a Mac (or any other OS besides Windows and MS-DOS for x86).

Whatever problem you’re trying to solve, cleaning the registry won’t fix it. Unlike Windows, no part of the Operating System itself on Mac OS is edited or altered by any application or driver install. To get rid of something, trash it and any files that come with it. You”re done.

Are you looking for Windows tools? If not, what exactly are you trying to “clean”, and why?Unquote.

So, my question is this; Shouldn’t it be part of buying a M.S. product?

Your quote was:
——————————
There is no registry, or anything like a registry, on a Mac (or any other OS besides Windows and MS-DOS for x86).

Whatever problem you’re trying to solve, cleaning the registry won’t fix it. Unlike Windows, no part of the Operating System itself on Mac OS is edited or altered by any application or driver install. To get rid of something, trash it and any files that come With it. You”re done.

Are you looking for Windows tools? If not, what exactly are you trying to “clean”, and why?
——————————

The statement “cleaning the registry won’t fix it” is referring to the Apple Mac operating system, not to Windows (that website is, after all, for “Canada’s Mac community”). And if it was referring to Windows it would be incorrect, as I’ve explained more than adequately in other posts.

The Windows registry is a database of information about (among other stuff) applications settings. The Mac operating system also has databases of information about applications settings. However there is a trend for Mac applications to be completely self-contained and thus not require any external support files or to have configuration settings stored in an external database.

But even Windows programmers do not have to utilise the registry for their applications. Windows programs can be completely standalone if the programmer wants to go that route. One downside to that approach is that it becomes more difficult to share information between applications. It’s not a problem that can’t be overcome, but it does exist so it’s worth mentioning.

As for Marc Andresson’s comments…

Well, while I’d be the last person to defend some of the weirdness and sloppiness that operates behind the scenes in Windows, Andresson’s antipathy to anything Microsoft takes on a rather jaundiced hue when you know that Bill Gates single-handedly bought Andresson’s company to its knees. Andresson’s long-nurtured hatred of Gates and Microsoft is well known in the industry.

Congratulations Uniblue. The new improved 2009 version fixed that uninstall bug.
Now there is no Redistry Booster link in the Control Panel add remove programs list. The only way to uninstall is to

1. Start RB and uncheck both default settings from the Settings tab

2. Reboot and then Delete C:\Program revealedFiles\uniblue

Thanks to this simple little problem, NOTHING that uniblue makes will ever be considered or even evaluated again. Why? Because people who are in the business of registry fixing don’t omit an uninstall routine accidentally.

You acted in bad faith and now your name is mud. Is there anything you can do to repair this? Not really but there is one saving grace:

The untold millions of computer users who will install or even purchase your stuff before asking anyone who has ever used it. As such you will continue in business. You just won’t ever grow to a major player without a serious integrity overhaul.
—————————————————————————————————-

Look, that whole post is complete nonsense based on a false premise.

There have been plenty of warnings in this long thread about the dangers of going off half-cocked with incorrect information. If you’re going to publicly make “expert” comments then you better make damn sure that you actually know what you are talking about — particularly if you’re going to use your “findings” to publicly denigrate a person, company or product.

As you are about to find out, all you’ve managed to do with your strident diatribe is reveal your own ignorance of the facts. Hopefully your embarrassment will prompt others to think twice and make sure of their facts before letting loose.

Anyone interested in the ACTUAL FACTS of this situation can refer to my article “Understanding & Troubleshooting the Add or Remove Programs Applet”, which can be found at:

Also, hopefully not too many people will follow your recommendation to: “2. Reboot and then Delete C:\Program Files\uniblue”. That’s just plain silly — completely the wrong way to remove any application.

And for the record, after installation *ON A HEALTHY PC*, there is most definitely an option to uninstall “Uniblue RegistryBooster 2009″ in the “Add or Remove Programs” dialog. You will find the reason for this adequately explained in the above-mentioned article. However, on a PC that is in some way compromised or in a state other than “healthy”, anything can happen. The message: Before blaming others for your mess, get your own house in order first.

Yes Bill, I should have put the whole post in. I just didn’t know how many characters fit into this dialogue box.
And you are correct on all 3 counts.Or 4?
Windows, Andresson,ETC,ETC,ETC.
I was only trying to make the point that maybe M.S. should address this problem. Not a 3rd party.
That all I meant by re-posting a comment from another forum

@Mr. Bill Hely, If I may ask you this question. Answer if you may?
How important is it to have a registry cleaner if you’re just a casual internet user? If you’re not connected to a network of 25, 50, 100, or a 1000 computers?
If you are like myself, I watch movies on my computer from sites like, Veoh, hulu, joost, ETC,ECT, ECT.
I tried Winamp once. It would stream for 15 minutes. Then it would freeze up my computer. So I uninstalled it.
So as a computer as I am, would just using the de-frag tool, clean C-Drive be OK for the casual user?
I’ve checked out your Web Page. Are you not geared more for the heavy information user, than a web browser type of person?
I don’t know? But isn’t the Windows O.S. designed to degrade from the minute you plug it into the internet?

> I don’t know? But isn’t the Windows O.S. designed to degrade
> from the minute you plug it into the internet?

“Designed” no, of course not, but I can see how you could be forgiven for thinking along those lines. Any developer, especially Microsoft, setting out today to design Windows from the ground up, wouldn’t end up with a product anything like the versions we currently have to put up with.

Windows today is a victim of its own history and of a cascade of attempts to maintain backward compatibility with earlier versions, and to accommodate legacy applications. Also, some of the most troublesome things about Windows and its suite of internal applications were actually included by design, with the best of intentions.

For example, Microsoft’s programmers intentionally provided many avenues for third-party developers to add extra functionality to Windows and to Internet Explorer and the other ActiveX-enabled applications. In the simpler and less paranoid early days of Windows development, that may have seemed like a reasonable, even commendable, thing to do. Of course, it backfired—badly. With the benefit of hindsight we can say that it was doubtless naive of those Microsoft programmers to think that all those lovely openings would only be used by the good guys to enhance the product and the user experience.

Program size also adds significantly to the complexity. Professional developers and software designers refer to a value called SLOC — Source Lines of Code. It is claimed that Windows XP has 40 million Physical SLOC. And each physical line can have more than one statement, so it’s Logical SLOC would obviously be considerably more. Although some Linux distros are made up of many times that number, Linux has a very different development history.

> I’ve checked out your Web Page. Are you not geared more for
> the heavy information user, than a web browser type of person?

For a decade or so I’ve concentrated mainly on assisting small business — more interesting and less bureaucracy/bull**** than the bigger organizations. There is also much more one-on-one interaction with end users, so there are constant reminders of the problems and concerns of those at the coalface. This is not a lot different to dealing with the serious home user, though that’s something I never do professionally — they simply don’t have the budget.

For the last couple of years I’ve been gradually withdrawing from active consulting, but as I can’t bear the thought of retirement I’m engaged more and more in online e-commerce activities. I have a number of websites plus several books and more on the way. Far from being high-end, I start every book with the goal of reducing a technical topic to terms that the average computer user can come to grips with. For example, there are a squillion in-depth technical books available on computer security, but prior to The Hacker’s Nightmare there was nothing that provided a complete education and an actual step-by-step guide for the average PC user.

> How important is it to have a registry cleaner if you’re just
> a casual internet user? If you’re not connected to a network
> of 25, 50, 100, or a 1000 computers?

While the registry certainly does contain some information about network connections and the like (if applicable to your situation), it is primarily a repository of information concerning your own local PC. Thus, whether or not you’re part of a network is largely irrelevant as far as registry maintenance is concerned.

On the applications side, there is a lot of commonality between the programs used by businesses and those used by home users. While you won’t find too many people using something like Oracle at home, you are likely to find Microsoft Office or Open Office on most business and home installations — plus PDF readers, WinZip, stuff like that is everywhere.

From a troubleshooting and maintenance perspective, on the one hand the stand-alone home PC doesn’t present the same connectivity complexities as an office workstation, but nor is it protected by usage rules laid down by management or an IT department, meaning that the home PC is invariably in some degree of “mess” most of the time and to a greater extent.

The usefulness of a registry cleaner will be greater in a situation where software is frequently installed and uninstalled, and where properly planned and well thought out protective measures aren’t in place.

> So as a computer as I am, would just using the de-frag tool,
> clean C-Drive be OK for the casual user?

Better than ignoring maintenance completely, but in my experience it would be a rare home/home-office user whose registry couldn’t do with the occasional cleanup.

For most of my maintenance and protective tools I have firm automatic schedules set for scans — usually happening sequentially during the night. But for the registry I’m more flexible, manually running RegistryBooster about once per week or so, depending on what sort of use I’ve been putting the computers to. If I’ve been doing a lot of testing, install/uninstall, that sort of stuff, I might run it every day or every couple of days.

Of course there is always the caveat that running a registry cleaner on a badly messed up registry can cause existing problems, that were not previously apparent, to suddenly become so. It might sound like a case of “damned if you do and damned if you don’t”, but in my experience you will benefit by getting your system healthy and running a registry cleaner periodically as part of a regimen to keep it that way.

I’ve been using Uniblue Registry Cleaner and SpeedUpMyPC for a few years without complaints. I recently up graded to 2009 versions. After running SUMP, I started running into random problems and errors. Thinking I did something wrong, I finally reloaded from backup. I ran SUMP again and similar problems occurred. I reloaded from backup and contacted Uniblue. They offered some other programs as a token. I replied that I wondered what went wrong. They sent me some steps that will unload the Uniblue programs and a link to re-install. I have resisted doing this at this time.

I ran Uniblue Registry Booster 2009 today and it found 5 errors. RegCure free scan found about 900 errors and RegFix7 found over 800 errors.

> I’ve been using Uniblue Registry Cleaner and SpeedUpMyPC for
> a few years without complaints. I recently up graded to 2009
> versions. After running SUMP, I started running into random
> problems and errors.

Troubleshooting computer problems is straight detective work, requiring careful, logical analysis to form deductions that fit the facts. But there can be so many factors involved that even then coincidence can, and often does, play a part.

What you mean by “random problems and errors”, and what reasons do you have for focusing on SUMP as their cause?

> Thinking I did something wrong, I
> finally reloaded from backup.

Reloaded what from backup?

You may have just been reloading the original problem.

> I ran SUMP again and similar
> problems occurred. I reloaded from backup and contacted
> Uniblue. They offered some other programs as a token.

Curious: What was the other program? What was it supposed to do?

> I replied that I wondered what went wrong. They sent me some
> steps that will unload the Uniblue programs and a link to
> re-install. I have resisted doing this at this time.

Why? A complete removal and reinstall from scratch seems like a very reasonable approach.

> I ran Uniblue Registry Booster 2009 today and it found 5
> errors. RegCure free scan found about 900 errors and RegFix7
> found over 800 errors.

Without hazarding a guess as to which, if any, of those utilities may be correct, I’ll suggest that the question you need to ask is: “What is an error?”

Registry errors can range from critical/crash-causing to minor and of little or no consequence. Often minor errors in the Registry will be cleaned up by Windows’ own internal housekeeping, without any assistance from an external third-party application such as a Registry Cleaner.

I often see people comparing different registry cleaners by the number of “errors” that each detects. Admittedly some cleaners are more aggressive than others, but most often the difference lies in just what the developer considers to be an “error” worth counting?

Some registry cleaners will intentionally ignore (not count) the likes of those very minor anomalies I mentioned above that would be taken care of by Windows’ internal housekeeping. That’s an honest and conservative approach.

Other developers go out of their way to detect and report every minor anomaly so as to make their application look “more thorough” than the opposition, while in reality a lot of what they report is irrelevant.

> Outlook would not work (at times), execution times were long,
> SUMP error message “Fatal error…needs to close”, lots of
> problems with startup programs.

Well, it’s quite possible that SUMP is changing some configuration setting/s that poses a problem on your particular PC. This is always a risk you face when you run applications that make a range of automated configuration changes. There are many such utilities, some aimed at “tuning” the entire system, whereas others are more targeted, such as those that attempt to tune Firefox (for example) for maximum performance.

Leaving out the fact that some such utilities are “backyard developments” with built-in glitches that are pretty much guaranteed to cause problems, almost universally those programs that are well designed and professionally coded will work on a range of systems and yet fail on many others.

The real problem isn’t that there’s anything wrong with the application per se, but rather that the goal is too ambitious, because Windows configurations can vary so much between individual systems.

Personally I’m not a fan of tuneup-type applications for that reason.

Another possibility which can’t be ignored out of hand is this: Is SUMP just revealing a problem that exists anyway, but that doesn’t become overt until a particular setting (possibly a driver configuration) is modified.

> Some programs that supposedly help trouble shoot drivers,
> etc. that are offered by Uniblue.

At a guess, they may have been offering you a free copy of DriverScanner. Given that drivers are a perennial bane of the Windows user, that’s an offer I would have been inclined to accept. You have to understand what a problem drivers (and the relationship between them) can be, before you can fully appreciate the part they play in so many problems.

> Reloading from a suspect program seems to be counter
> productive. I don’t want to spend the time troubleshooting
> programs that don’t work.

Did you research SUMP to see if other users are having the same problem as you? That’s really the only practical way to to determine if it’s one of those “programs that don’t work”.

On the other hand, troubleshooting a new version of an application that has worked well for you for a couple of years doesn’t sound like a waste of time to me. Still, that’s your call.

> Following is a comment from a respected Microsoft employee:
>
> “Generally speaking, registry cleaners will cause more harm
> than they fix, but can sometimes be useful if you’re trying
> to fix specific issues”.

Well, just to reiterate a few points I’ve already touched on…

1. The efficacy of registry cleaners has been debated ad nauseam for years, and even experts inside and outside of Microsoft can’t agree.

2. Mark Russinovich has been one of the planet’s most respected experts on the Windows architecture for well over a decade. In 2006 Microsoft bought his companies Sysinternals and Winternals so they could get hold of his range of utility products and him, appointing him a Technical Fellow in their Platform and Services Division.

3. Russinovich has publicly supported the use of Registry Cleaners: “So it seems that Registry junk is a Windows fact of life and that Registry cleaners will continue to have a place in the anal-sysadmin’s tool chest, at least until we’re all running .NET applications that store their per-user settings in XML files – and then of course we’ll need XML cleaners”. In my opinion such a claim from someone of Russinovich’s standing outweighs anything to the contrary from some unidentified “respected Microsoft employee”.

4. Although Registry Defragging and Registry Cleaning are slightly different, there is enough of an association to mention that Microsoft still distributes the PageDefrag utility originally developed by Mark Russinovich, thus implicitly giving their blessing to Registry Defragging.

5. Microsoft’s Windows Live OneCare includes a REGISTRY CLEANER to (in their words) “help remove invalid or obsolete registry items on your computer”.

> I don’t think I should have to research problems
> with SUMP. I paid for a “good” product!

With a few high-profile mainstream exceptions, you should research every application you purchase, especially those that come as an Internet download.

If you don’t do a bit of research how do you know you’re paying for a “good” product, and not something that’s already been widely reported as a “dud”?

Not doing their homework and due diligence is one of the common reasons people get into so much trouble with new software.

But quite apart from that, if you have a specific problem, and your research fails to turn up anyone else with the same problem, that’s a pretty good indicator that the problem doesn’t lie with the application. Which in turn is a good indicator that you may have a system problem that it would be wise to track down and fix before it becomes critical.

Prevention is better than cure — and early cure is better than ultimate disaster.

Pre-installation (or better still pre-purchase) research is just plain commonsense.

You’re being notified of new posts to the page because you subscribed.

If a post is in *REPLY* to an earlier message then it will appear up there with that message, not down the bottom with the latest new messages. Otherwise replies would be so out of context they wouldn’t make any sense.

To find the relevant message on the page search for some likely unique quote from the message, such as “Sensationalist crap”.

In this case the misinformation was so blatant that I decided to put the record straight even though it was long after the original claim.

Comment: This user was obviously upset. While your knowledge and contributions can be helpful, your arrogance and attitude to users looking for help negates the helpfulness. You’ve been in the business a long time…I’ve been a user (and researcher) a lot longer. You might consider lightening up as you grow older.

Being upset is no excuse for the dissemination of blatant bull****. There’s been too much of that on this page.

> While your knowledge and contributions
> can be helpful, your arrogance and attitude
> to users looking for help negates the
> helpfulness.

POINT #1: While I would much rather educate than denigrate, I have no patience for people who willfully mislead others with false information. It’s usually pretty clear as to whether misinformation is simply an unfortunate error in their own beliefs, or intentional misdirection. In the case of someone claiming their PC had become a doorstop after running PowerSuite 2009, there is no doubt in my mind the intent was malicious, and I don’t want to see any novices harboring any doubts about that.

POINT #2: Nothing negates the usefulness of facts, regardless of how they are presented. While there are some people who are so precious that they need to be cajoled into accepting an education, I have no interest in feeding their delusions of their own value. They accept what I offer or they don’t. I really couldn’t care less, because at least I tried, and any loss is not mine.

> You’ve been in the business a long time…I’ve
> been a user (and researcher) a lot longer.

Then you also go back to the days of punch cards? I don’t know where you got your perception of my age, but I predate the advent of PCs, as you can see from the “About Us” page of my blog. So if you go back that far or further then either you were also a hobbyist/builder or you worked with Big Iron???

And a “researcher” who refuses to research his purchases? How interesting.

> You might consider lightening up as you grow older.

I think it’s widely accepted that we become less accommodating as we get older. We also care a lot less about criticism, but it’s a personal foible of mine that I’m as passionate as ever about seeing that people who are interested in learning aren’t fed crap — intentionally or accidentally.

I’ve been reading through… what… three pages of comments and replies? I’ve lost count, as I have also been linking, cross linking, google search/researching, and making a general waste of my morning.

*/-aside: I need to quantify that I originally downloaded, ran and thought about full purchase, then realized that I purchased a new laptop not two hours ago and intend on wiping this one when it gets here in the post… sometime in the next couple of days… so yeah, just an exercise in random learning?-

While I have read Bill’s posts with the trepidation of your average truly cynical/pessimistic internet/windows user, I find everything he has said to be very forward and factual. I’ll point out that I actually surfed Bill’s blog for a little while as well.

I was content with reading and preparing to “fav” the blog for later perusal when I came across a little tet-a-tet that ended with this little jewel:

>I think it’s widely accepted that we become less accommodating as we get older. We also care a lot less
>about criticism, but it’s a personal foible of mine that I’m as passionate as ever about seeing that people
>who are interested in learning aren’t fed crap — intentionally or accidentally.

Bravo… seriously! I just had to commend you for that, Bill. I’m tempted to purchase your book, and the Power Suite here just to solidify my stand behind that last bit of honesty and genius. Thank you, Bill, for giving me a lift… I’ll definitely favorite your blog… likely buy your book… and give some of your recommendations a good researching, in the least. Now I just have to remember what service I was going to use for my online bookmarks before I wipe my drive

Bill, like so many amateur end users with a little bit of knowledge this dood can’t be helped because he is in denial. Since he thinks he shouldn’t have to do any research I did it for him, and I couldn’t find the symptoms he describes repeated anywhere else in association with that speed up program. As you said, that strongly suggests that his problems are localized and do not lie with the application. Simple deductive logic.

I support 200+ mixed Windows platforms in a small manufacturing company. We give our users ongoing education so we don’t get many of the usual stupid mistakes, but you’re right about the problems that drivers can cause. As I’m sure you know they can be darn tricky to track down too.

It would be interesting to know how Gary has confirmed that he doesn’t have any localized system problems!

Re Bill Hely’s last post (February 1, 2009 2:39 am): Here Here!! Well said! And there should be more of it! There is an increasing amount of transparently thoughtless and quite useless nonsense being sprouted by some on this thread. Much of it could be very misleading to novices (and even to some experienced but relatively inexpert business users, like myself). I for one (and I know I’m not alone) am very grateful that Bill provides the info he does. I also don’t care how “arrogantly” or otherwise he is in dismissing or correcting those who would (intentionally or inadvertently) mislead us. Thanks, Bill; keep it coming.

“Big Iron” ? is that the same as “Big Blue” or IBM. Then yes…I worked with them as a customer. Programming was with punch cards using Fortran or machine language. I programmed the control of a paper pulp mill bleach plant in the 60’s with a IBM 1800 (16K memory).

I did process simulation in the early 80’s.

I did equipment inventory for a multinational paper company using dBase in the early 80’s.

Much more process control utilizing specialized computers after that.

And…I do not have patience to deal with people like you with the lack of customer (I assume you are in bed with Uniblue) care that you have.

Re: “Gary: Signing off!”…Excellent; one less distraction. Sprouting on about how old you are (you’re not the only oldie here, believe me), all the places you’ve worked, or all the things you’ve done is meaningless unless you can demonstrate your compentence with some specific, insightful and, preferably, technical, contribution. Most of the “watchers” of this forum are probably like me – here to learn something. So far there’ve only been a very small handful of contributions that have provided any actual education. By contrast there have been a lot like him who’re more concerned about being treated with kid gloves than with actual education (perhaps he thinks he doesn’t need any education with all his “experience”); although I’d say that’s demonstrably not the case. Good riddance.

Gary would have us believe he’s taking his ball and going home in a huff. Come on Gary, we all know you’re still lurking!

> “Big Iron” ? is that the same as “Big Blue” or IBM.

Big Iron has been a universally-used generic term for mainframes since not long after minis first appeared on the scene in the mid 1960s. It was a term used to distinguish between the original mainframes and the new minicomputers. Anyone professionally associated with mainframes at that time or since would know that. Of course an end user back then wasn’t much different than an end-user today, and wouldn’t be considered “professionally associated”.

> And…I do not have patience to deal with people like you
> with the lack of customer (I assume you are in bed with
> Uniblue) care that you have.

You assume incorrectly, as I have made unambiguously clear in a number of past messages here. I certainly promote RegistryBooster, just as I promote any quality product that I use myself and recommend to my clients, friends and associates.

But the fact that you even raise that possibility prompts me to ask: “Why would any association between myself and Uniblue even be relevant?”

Facts are facts, regardless of the source, and facts are all I’ve ever presented to answer questions and counter misrepresentation of the product, or to clarify inaccuracies about anything else that has been raised here.

At no stage have I ever used “trust me” or “take my word for it” or any similar unsubstantiated platitude to make a point. Just plain facts and logical analysis based on long experience. Doesn’t mean I can’t be wrong, but a convincing counter would need to be a cogent argument — temper tantrums don’t count.

Although this isn’t a Uniblue website, and it’s certainly not an official Uniblue support site, the real Uniblue support people were once quite active here. They made many attempts to assist people who for the most part couldn’t even be bothered responding to their offer of assistance. Is it any wonder they might not be inclined to appear as frequently as before.

My main concern in volunteering my time in any public forum is to do my best to see that novices (those genuinely trying to learn) aren’t led astray and misinformed — whether by genuine mistake or bogus accusation.

I don’t have to be concerned with presenting a caring bedside manner. As I said earlier, if you are so precious that you need information spoon-fed to you by a caring, coaxing mother figure, then you need an attitude adjustment and as far as I’m concerned you can stay ignorant. I lose nothing.

After an unnecessary install of the horrible dotNet framework 3.5 that kept my PC busy for an hour, the optimizer Scan spitted out a list of tweaks some of which I had already done (i.e. it told me to disable services which were ALREADY disabled).

On that note, although quite off-topic: That .net Framework 3.5 installer so sucks! Shame on Microsoft for it.

Have you installed .net Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 yet? If not you will need to: It’s a critical update. 258MB at between 158 and 0 Kbs last time I uploaded it. That took more than an hour in itself. It’s a pig to install; but well worth having installed.

The dotNet framework is, among other things, a very large library of code modules. Microsoft intends the framework to be central to future applications development. Without the framework installed on your PC many applications will not run, and that situation will be exacerbated with the passage of time. Thus it is a desirable thing to have installed.

Yes, it’s huge size makes it a dog of a thing to download and, as Sharron said, the installer isn’t Microsoft’s best work.

Of course the size/download problem goes away if you can install it from CD. Unfortunately the dotNet framework is not included with XP, but it is included with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista. Even then you will still need to download updates, but Windows Update (which you use religiously, of course!) should take care of that.

The framework can be installed separately on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. There is even a cut-down version for Windows Mobile and embedded CE platforms, including some smart phones.

Installing the dotNet framework is a one-off PITA that pays dividends in the long run, so for anyone that doesn’t already have it, it’s worth downloading and installing when you have the time, rather than when you suddenly find you have to, usually in the middle of installing something else.

WOW WHAT A MESS, I have been online for days to get rid of registrybooster 2, I Did have the Uninstall option in my control panel, but I guess I partly uninstalled it while some of it was running and corrupted the uninstall option, so I downloaded the same version, an uninstalled the whole program, it seems to have worked so far, I believe it was Hillary who advised of that in this thread.THANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If anyone is having problems trying to remove this, or any other program, I would suggest getting the FREE uninstaller at http://www.revouninstaller.com. Best uninstaller out there that I know of and it is free, and I have tried them all.

I bought all 3 packages, RegBooster – no problem.
Speed up PC – no problem.
Driver Scanner said there was updated Atheros wireless driver for my XP install on my dual-boot Macbook Pro. I installed and rebooted, now my lovely machine is totally kaput – no display and does not boot.
I rue the day……….now off to the expensive Apple repair depot….trudge, trudge.

Updating drivers is a task that should always be approached with a degree of wariness and trepidation. In other posts on this page Jason-P and I have both warned about the problems that can be caused by drivers.

I train my clients never to update drivers for hardware that is already working fine, without first thoroughly investigating what the update will do for you and whether other users are reporting any problems. Search engines like Google make such investigations quite easy.

That said, it’s wise to keep in mind that drivers are sometimes updated not to provide more functionality but to plug security holes, so a security improvement comes under the heading of “what the update will do for you”, thus making it a desirable upgrade.

There are a number of different software packages and online services that will compare your current driver versions with versions currently available from developers. But COMPARE and REPORT are all they do — they don’t supply the drivers and they aren’t responsible for them.

Like all software patches, driver updates are an important consideration, but they can be problematic.

Your first call should be to the support department of the company that supplied the driver update. This isn’t a problem related to the scanning software.

I couldn’t find a “Bill Hay” anywhere on this page, so I’ll assume you are referring to “Bill Hely”.

This is my first contribution to the conversation, but I’ve been lurking for a while and I’ve read every single one of the hundreds of messages here.

Something that’s quite noticeable is the regular appearance of abusive juveniles (in mind if not in years) with no manners, obviously no ability and nothing to contribute other than bile and bull%$#@.

Baseless personal attacks are the cowardly refuge of small minds devoid of any original thought, and reveal a lot more about your own murky character than about the person you’re attacking.

Whether you agree with his product preferences or not, no individual has contributed more to this thread in the way of genuinely useful information and assistance to others than Bill Hely. I’ve learnt a lot from his posts here and from related articles on his blog, and I’m very grateful he takes the trouble to explain things so clearly. I’m sure many other silent observers here feel the same way.

IF YOU HAVE A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION AT LEAST HAVE THE GUTS TO EXPRESS IT SO THAT IT CAN BE DEBATED.

But keep the petty, small-minded attacks to yourself, as most of us aren’t interested in seeing non-contributors sidetrack the main issue. There’s already been too much of that.

From my own experience, I had trouble with Registry Booster initially but got it sorted out by following instructions from Uniblue. Fairly obvious place to seek help, don’t you think? Now I run RB regularly and my computer is the better for it. Only the extremely inexperienced user will dump a program and start squawking because everything doesn’t go perfectly straight off. S%$t happens!

The content of this thread is starting to remind me of the good ole days in Fido or Fight-o-net. There are times I remember fondly the ability to log an EA complaint against a sysop or user, make it stick and get their access cut…ahhhhh progress

I downloaded free scan , it claimed I had 457 registry errors but it could only fix 15. I bought the software and I had the 457 registry errors fixed .
I honestly can’t see any difference in the performance of my computer .
What in the heck does this program do if I can’t see any difference with performance or anything.
I feel like I might have been ripped off.

Downloaded “free trial”. Of course, only the scan was free .To clean you must buy. I don’t want to buy. It keeps starting up every time and takes 4 clicks to turn off. Cannot remove it from startup menu in msconfig. Bad enough. Then all USB stopped working. Brought to my repairman. After many hours and $133.00 bill he fixes it and states it was caused by uniblue and he had a lot of trouble uninstalling it. Not impressed DON’T DOWNLOAD THIS UNLESS YOU WANT TO BUY AND IF YOU DO,READ THE HUNDREDS OF COMMENTS ON THIS SITE.

Yeah man, I know what you mean. I’d like to get Microsoft Office and Dreamweaver and Photoshop all for free too. How dare those companies ask us for money just because they spend thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars developing software. It should all be free for the taking. [Aaaaah .. pleasantly dreaming]

> It keeps starting up every time and takes 4 clicks to
> turn off. Cannot remove it from startup menu in msconfig.

Why would you be messing with msconfig? RegistryBooster provides you with a one-click way of having it start with Windows or not. It’s right there on the Settings tab. It really does pay to explore new programs before getting into a frenzy?

But seeing as you had msconfig running, why couldn’t you disable it there? It’s just a matter of clicking a check-box. Then you need to restart your computer before the change will take effect.

> Then all USB stopped working.

OK, so why didn’t you click on the Restore tab and restore the registry to its pre-cleanup state? You can go back eight cleanups, which should be plenty to recover from any undesirable changes.

> Brought to my repairman. After many
> hours and $133.00 bill he fixes it and states it was
> caused by uniblue and he had a lot of trouble uninstalling
> it. Not impressed

There are only three possibilities I can see here:

Either:

Your repairman is a conman who picked you as an easy mark;

-OR-

He’s incompetent;

-OR-

There’s something you haven’t mentioned, like some grossly inappropriate actions you may have taken trying to uninstall the program, thus completely messing up any chance of easy removal.

*IF* (and it’s a monstrous IF) RegistryBooster did in fact make some inappropriate registry modification that affected USB functionality, there would be no indication at all in the registry as to what made that change. In other words, it would be utterly impossible for anyone to claim “it was caused by uniblue”, UNLESS they carefully analyzed the log files and found such evidence. And to do that I believe RegistryBooster would have to be functional (I *think* the log files are stored on the drive in a compressed/encrypted format). Frankly I haven’t met many service technicians who would know what to look for in the registry when troubleshooting something like that.

Alternatively, if he’s claiming that the RegistryBooster installation itself caused loss of USB functionality (say, a driver or DLL problem) then I’d really like to hear Uniblue’s take on whether that was even possible. I very much doubt there is any possible correlation at all, but I’d be guided by the programmers on that point.

> DON’T DOWNLOAD THIS UNLESS YOU WANT TO BUY AND IF
> YOU DO,READ THE HUNDREDS OF COMMENTS ON THIS SITE.

Yeah, and in particular read the messages from those people who clearly know what they’re talking about, as opposed to the novices who could get into trouble turning their monitor on.

And consider this (something I keep coming back to): What’s the Story with those dozens of experienced technical writers who reviewed the product for their magazines, websites, blogs etc and who all gave the product a high rating? Were they all just lucky? Could they all have been on the take from Uniblue?

While I don’t blame you for being upset, particularly if your anger is based on what you were told by the serviceman, such claims really are extremely unlikely. But they are dangerous by virtue of the fact that inexperienced people who don’t know any better just may believe them.

SOME GOOD ADVICE FOR EVERYONE:
If you have problems with ANY commercial program your VERY FIRST port of call should be the publisher’s Help Desk. DO NOT start groping around by yourself because you will almost certainly create new problems. And above all, do not try to “uninstall” by deleting files and folders. Free support is there for a reason, and they can help you best if you call them early.

I can’t see any problems installing and uninstalling this product in my computer and I’ve been using this software couple of years ago. This software worth the money. BUT! (Sigh) Why did they discontinue the SpyEraser?

I have add this issue last year, never got resolved, and trying again without much from tech support yet. Since I see representatives of the product here, I figured I give this a go around. Maybe I can be pointed to an individual who has a solution to this nailed down? Here we go…

I tried to download the trials but during install they want to download some components. It times out. I am a tinker and I have tinker until my heard contented with all the tinkering. I have done everything I could to get one of these trials to fully install. Nothing. I wrote to tech support and she suggested I buy the full version product. Excuse me??? So, I wrote back explaining that I would not buy the full version since the trial does not work, taking in consideration that the full will fail to download as well. I asked for advisement but it has been 13 days with no answer.

Without using this as a tech board, as this is not but is a review board, but seeing representatives responding, figured I give it a quick try. Can not hurt.

Truther, I’m not with Uniblue, but I am a very satisfied user of RegistryBooster and I have installed it quite a few times on different computers, so I’ll be happy to help you if I can.

If your initial problems go back to last year, you may have been using an early version of RegistryBooster, with which there were some install/uninstall problems. I can’t recall the exact details now but those problems were acknowledged by Uniblue and eventually fixed. I can tell you from multiple personal experiences that there should be no problems encountered either installing or uninstalling RegistryBooster 2009. If you encounter such problems then the cause almost certainly lies with your own system.

I agree with you 100% that advising you to purchase the registered version when you couldn’t get the trial working was a poor response from Uniblue support. In my experience they can usually do better than that, so hopefully you just got the wrong person on the wrong day.

There is one potential sticking point that I should mention, though I don’t think it will apply in this case. Pretty much all trial software, no matter who publishes it, is encoded so that you can only run the free trial once. I haven’t checked this with RegistryBooster, and given the nature of the product I doubt that it applies, but best to be aware. If ever you do encounter this sort of thing you need to contact the developers for a workaround. They may want to know why you’re installing the trial multiple times.

> I tried to download the trials but during install
> they want to download some components. It times out.

Were those “components” the ‘dotNet Framework’? I explained the purpose of the dotNet Framework in an earlier post above — look for a post by ‘Bill Hely’ on February 10, 2009 5:08 pm. Everybody who is ever likely to install any software into Windows should take the time to download and install the dotNet framework. That will save you wasting time with it when some program you are installing demands it.

The dotNet framework is a massive download, which could explain the timeout, in which case that part of the problem at least is nothing to do with RegistryBooster itself.

Once you have successfully installed the dotNet Framework, download a fresh copy of the RegistryBooster 2009 trial and install it.

REMEMBER THE GOLDEN RULE:
Always reboot your computer BEFORE AND AFTER any software installation — whether the installer tells you to or not.

I do not know what it wants. Just says “download of components fail” or something of the sort.

Yes, all .NETs are good and updated as of last week. What you mentioned about how the trials brought up some old memories…. long ago I tried a copy of the registry cleaner and it worked fine. Oh, this was years ago. Forget the reason but I uninstalled it (back then, using Windows’ ADD/REMOVE . It was not until years later (being 2008 now) that I wanted to the products again but nothing worked. Maybe I do have something lingering in my registry from that older copy that none of my register cleaners I have been using for years see as redundant. Anything and everything else I install works, but these Uniblue products. Maybe I will be lucky and find something in the registry actually named as such (and not BDSUJNIH*H&893huih*&^ deep in regsitry key youarescrewed487509423875, etc) that I can remove and make it work.

I give that a try (seeing if an old entry lingers and needs to be removed manually) and if it fails, I try their support again and see if I do get someone else.

If you have any problems contacting Uniblue support, or getting the assistant you need from them, try e-mailing Hilary Rogers. She has posted her e-mail address a number of times in this thread as: hilaryr@uniblue.net.

Going by her last post here it was still a valid address on January 14.

But do try the support people first, as I gather Hilary is more of a trouble-shooter than a tech-type.

There are ways to control this program in the settings tab as mentioned before. My only problem with it is it keeps looping, gets stuck on WOW6432 node. And it keeps running on that file forever. I am running vista home 32-64 bit. How do I correct this problem?

Never mind my question. I found out it is a needed file. Instead I uninstalled Registry cleaner. To do this properly here are the steps I used.
1- open Task Maneger and find it in Processes and end it.
2- Use Easy Cleaner by Toni Arts. (Freeware, use Google search to fine) It also has a great registry cleaner and several other very good PC maintenence program included with it. I have never had a problem using it.
3- Uninstall Uniblue. You then need to delete the name from the list.
4- Go to run, type in regedit then click ok. In the edit at the top of the page click find next and type in uniblue and click ok. It should bring up one item. Delete this and click find next once more to make sure. Close the registry. Double check in your program folder to make sure th e unibluefolder is gone and you should be rid of this program forevevr.
I hope this has helped.

Quote, from Bill Hely.There is one potential sticking point that I should mention, though I don’t think it will apply in this case. Pretty much all trial software, no matter who publishes it, is encoded so that you can only run the free trial once. I haven’t checked this with RegistryBooster, and given the nature of the product I doubt that it applies, but best to be aware. If ever you do encounter this sort of thing you need to contact the developers for a workaround. They may want to know why you’re installing the trial multiple times. Unquote.

Bill, you know as well as I know. I mean even better then I know. There is a Uniblue crack out on a torrent site, somewhere. A little searching will find it.

I’m sorry Bill, I didn’t finish what I was saying in the thread. Yes, you should not download, or search for the crack. That’s stealing. And you should be punished for it.
And that’s the best way to get a little thing called MALWARE onto your computer.
I was only trying to say; You can find a reset. It’s not beyond the realm.
As I have been learning from your wisdom, all things are possible.
You have taught me many things in this thread Bill. Many thanks.

I CAN NOT ACTIVATE MY REGISTRY BOOSTER- SERIAL NUMBER LTK14505216294X. I TRIED TO DO WHAT THEY TOLD ME TO DO YESTERDAY, FAILED——PLEASE DO IT FOR ME,!!!!!!!I AM 70 AND I AM CONFUSED–PLEASE,PLEASE,PLEASE USERNAME:CRAZYNANA3

Bobbie, you really need to provide full information when asking for assistance. We have no idea what “they” told you to do yesterday, or what happened as a result… “FAILED” could mean many things, and EXACT word-for-word error messages are very useful in sorting out problems.

Did you COPY the serial number from the e-mail and PASTE it into the RegistryBooster registration field? As a general rule you should never try to TYPE in long sequences of letters and numbers such as usually make up registrations. Always copy & paste.

If you’ve tried that without success then you really do need to contact Uniblue support via their website.

Oh, and by the way, NEVER NEVER NEVER publicly post serial numbers, registration numbers, passwords, or anything like that. Such data is private and restricted to your use only.

For a first run that’s not an excessive number. It would only be a worry if you repeatedly get numbers like that with a relatively short interval between scans — like every couple of days.

I’ve been using RegistryBooster approximately weekly for several months, as have a number of my clients. None of us have had a problem.

However, intrusive utilities like Registry cleaners can reveal problems you didn’t know you had, which will usually become evident after you’ve run the fix. The program allows you to do a pre-scan backup of the Registry for a very good reason.

Reboot your computer before you run a scan, and again after a fix has completed.

I downloaded Uniblue registry booster (free trial), and it wanted me to purchase before any removal. Why purchase a program that you really don’t know if your going to like or not? No registries were removed, I closed the program, then went to uninstall it, and as soon as I clicked remove, it came up with the INSTALL program to install it. I do not trust this. And any time a software pulls up a 100 different things to be removed, then wants me to purchase, sends up a red flag. I will never buy any software that say FREE scan, THEN say purchase to remove. How do I not know it is giving a bunch of false positives. This is bad business practices.

> Why purchase a program that you really don’t know if
> your going to like or not?

You might ask the same question of practically every major commercial software developer. When was the last time Microsoft gave you a free copy of Office to see if you liked it? As has been pointed out by others in previous messages, developers who want to stay in business don’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on software development just to give it away for free. There’s plenty of free crap around, help yourself, and be prepared for the consequences.

As for the rest of your message, your reasoning is illogical.

Firstly, why did you even bother to download a registry cleaner if you’re not going to believe the results because, in your own words: “How do I not know it is giving a bunch of false positives.”

Secondly, what would you have done if RegistryBooster was completely free? You would have run the cleanup. In other words, you would trust a free program, but not one you have to pay for. Sounds like the definition of STUPID to me.

And finally, please point to the location on the Uniblue website where it says that a complete repair process is free. What it actually says is that the SCAN is free, and it is. You’re another one of those people who see what they want to see instead of what’s actually written in plain language. If you don’t understand the difference between SCAN and REPAIR refer to a dictionary. Because you can scan the horizon doesn’t mean you can alter it.

If you were seriously interested in determining the value of this product you would have read at least most of the earlier messages on this topic. It’s not hard to identify the people who obviously know what they’re talking about, as opposed to the ignorant/misinformed novices.

It seems to me that you are a Microsoft employee with the culture of perpetual updates and monopolistic practices, take a look at all the good Open Source software, is it free? yes, do people trust on it? yes. In case you don’t know about what Open Source is, Firefox and OpenOffice may sound familiar to you.

I think that registry booster business model is too aggressive, take a look at skype, or even logmein which I’ve used for years and they are not bugging me to upgrade to their other products (which BTW are pretty good) every time I log into my account and try to do something.

Armado, I believe you have jumped to an unjustified conclusion regarding Jason’s employment. By doing a search for his name through previous messages here I came across this statement from him: “I support 200+ mixed Windows platforms in a small manufacturing company”. Even quite apart from that, I can see no inference in his response that he is a Microsoft employee.

And I have to admit that Jason’s response makes perfect sense to me also.

> I think that registry booster business model is too aggressive

Neither you nor I are in a position to know what Uniblue’s “business model” is. What you’re referring to is their apparent advertising & marketing policy, and if you had any business experience you would know that, unless you like failure or mediocrity, you can never be too aggressive in your marketing.

Advertising is all about testing testing testing, and marketing policies are based on the results. The free scan + limited free fix is widely used in the marketing of many software products, it’s quite upfront, it’s a legitimate tactic, and its very successful from a sales perspective (or it wouldn’t continued to be used).

While many open source software products are excellent, they are vastly outnumbered by the faulty crap. But the biggest problem of all with open source software, as far as business and professional people are concerned, is the “no fault” situation. If a commercial application causes a problem, say on a network of dozens of computers, requiring thousands of dollars worth of man-hours to fix, the business has some recourse to compensation. But who do you sue in the case of most open source software? Some open source software from major corporations is an exception to that observation, but not many.

Such considerations are also partly (but only partly) the reason that Linux has never taken off as a desktop operating system in the business environment.

In the case of an invasive tool such as a registry cleaner, I would certainly want to know that there is professional development and a responsible company behind it before I would let it scour through my Registry.

Of course, as an individual you are free to use or ignore anything you like. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your particular situation will be applicable to everyone.

I am realizing that I don’t want to engage in a conversation that will not be positive at all, because I suspect that you have no idea of what open source is (I wonder if you even use Firefox). So perhaps I was not positive I admit, and I apologize to Jason, to you and all readers of this blog post and comments.

All I want to say at this point, in hope that it benefits how people use comments on a blog (including me) is this: let’s try to bring value to readers, and talk to each other as friends of a community. The fact that I disagree to something or that you have a website where you have an affiliate link to Registry Booster and if people talk negatively you will make less money, does not mean that we have to be rude to each other.

I will not comment any more here, because I don’t feel right engaging in this type of dynamic, so peace!

Armado, it’s easy to make disparaging comments and then say that you’re not going to comment further. That doesn’t discourage me from responding in order to clarify the situation for others who may be misled by your claims and suppositions.

Firstly, Firefox is my preferred browser. I also use Internet Explorer and Google Chrome for certain purposes, and several other browsers and versions on occasion, mainly to test websites. I will also make the bold statement that Internet Explorer can be used quite safely by those who know what they’re doing — but very few average PC users are in that position.

And after 20+ years in IT I think I’ve got a reasonable idea of what open source is all about. I have probably used, tested and been involved with the development of more open source applications than you have heard of. Just a guess, but not an unreasonable one!

> you have a website where you have an
> affiliate link to Registry Booster

Very true, but much more important than the fact that I promote RegistryBooster is the REASON that I promote it and the sequence of events that led to the decision.

As readers of my book “The Hacker’s Nightmare” know, I used to recommend a different registry cleaner. But I’m always testing new products and when something comes up that is a worthy replacement for a previous recommendation, I move to the better option. There is a notice inside the members area of The Hacker’s Nightmare website that members who are using my previous recommendation shouldn’t feel compelled to change, as it is still a good product that does the job.

However I determined RegistryBooster to be a solid product with an excellent user interface that did a thorough job with much less fuss and user intervention than most of its competitors.

Like any ethical consultant I only promote/recommend products that I would use myself — and preferably that I have been able to personally test. While not all of my readers use all of my recommendations all of the time, in the five years since the first version of The Hacker’s Nightmare I have never had a single reader call me out for recommending a product that wasn’t up to scratch. You can read my own recent article on registry cleaners here:http://computerandonlinesecurity.com/hints-tips/choosing-a-registry-cleaner/
That article and my own adoption of RegistryBooster followed a period of personal testing, and only then did I decide that the product was worthy of promotion.

> does not mean that we have to be rude to each other.

No it doesn’t, but misinformation deserves a firm response, and if you choose to view a stern correction as rudeness then I can only suggest that your sensitivity control needs an adjustment. There was nothing rude about my previous response, and it’s a cheap shot for you to try and take that way out.

In discussion arenas such as this I try to provide factual information free of charge, based on my long and varied experience in this industry. Only a fool would claim to have all the answers, and I don’t have anywhere near all of them — but I think I can reasonably claim that I probably have more answers than the average computer user. It doesn’t affect me in the slightest if people choose to ignore what I have to say. And if anyone wishes to disagree by presenting a sensible argument, I’m always happy to listen, learn and debate.

Of course there is an obvious benefit to me in giving free help and advice to people; it gives me a chance to demonstrate that there might be some benefit to taking a look at my books. That’s just commonsense marketing.

You, Mister, have a SERIOUS attitude problem! The very least you could do is be courteous with people who disagree with you (and trotting out ‘I have more experience than you’ statements denigrates others, PERIOD! You, Dear Sir, do not have a clue as to how much experience a person has until you meet them, question them, test them, and evaluate them before you shoot off your mouth with comparisons. I am now going to uninstall this program due to your unwarranted attacks and your nasty attitude. I don’t think you are doing this Registry Program and favors!

You might want to check your facts before you make random statements. Microsoft does indeed offer you “free” trials on their software, you get to use Windows Vista for 30 days with full functionality, Office System 2007 for 60 days, if you can be bothere you can even get to check out Windows 7 for close to a year.
Yes, they do this with the intent that you purchase their product after you have had the chance to evaluate it.
So your statement that no company offers a free trial with full functionality is at best inaccurate. And if that still isn’t good enough for you, as Armando said, go Open Source.

Microsoft DO NOT provide free copies of Office to anyone who wants it. They allow you to trial the commercial version, and that’s not free, it’s just delayed payment. OK, maybe I could have worded it better, but you’re the only one to object so it seems everyone else understood exactly what I meant. Commercial developers who want to stay in business don’t give their stuff away for free.

Software developers have many different ways of enticing people to buy their products: Time-limited trial of a complete product – Trial version may be limited or crippled in some way – Trial version may produce watermarked output, like some of the PDF printers, and so on.

The nature of the trial will be at least partly dictated by the nature of the software, and each publisher has every right to determine the most appropriate way to place limits on their trials.

Windows 7 is a completely different situation. It’s available for free because it’s not a finished product, hence the name “Release Candidate”. Making this time-limited version available is a marketing and research exercise. The official blurb is that you can use it for free until June 1 next year, but in reality it will be unusable after March 1, as it will automatically shut down every two hours after that date.

Bill Hely described registry cleaners as “invasive” software and that’s an appropriate description. If I took an open source registry cleaner into my company and it trashed some of our servers or any of our over 200 workstations, the company would have no one to turn to for recovery costs and I’d be out of a job for running such a risk. That’s a completely different situation to running something like Open Office, which I’d be quite comfortable with.

I was not trying to promote the Registry Cleaner, my point simply was that you can get trial versions of software from pretty much any company, where the only limitation is the time its usable.
In my opinion Uniblue Registry Cleaner is just another application that does more harm than it fixes, and I base that on the experience I have had with the machines I have removed it from.
I agree with you that companies only provide trial software to entice the consumer to buy it, but I will still stick by my claim that it is possible to get trial versions of their software.

there are plenty of software providers that do offer their products free AVG, ZONE ALARM, CCLEANER,ADAWARE to name a few so quit trying to drum up business for a product that does more harm than good and expects you to pay for it.

Jason is right to a degree. Quite common that a free trial teases you otherwise no one would buy. However the ability to completely uninstall shouldn’t be a problem and if RegistryBooster is making that difficult I would hesitate downloading. I use another product that is very good – registrymedic and they do the same thing with their trial version … only so many entries will be cleaned for free. Give that a shot because I know it uninstalls completely.

As I have personally proven many times (and reported on here quite a few times as well), there are no uninstall problems with RegistryBooster unless there is a problem with the host computer, and that can happen with any software installation. There are certain system problems that will prevent any application from uninstalling properly.

Here’s the root cause of many complaints…

What you have to understand is that *ANY* registry cleaner is an invasive tool, in that it makes changes to a vital system component. It’s not at all uncommon for a registry-related problem to exist but to go unnoticed until an attempt is made to rectify the problem, for example by the running of a registry cleaner.

99.9% of the time the uninformed user will immediately leap to the (usually erroneous) conclusion that the registry cleaner is at fault.

Fortunately, well-designed registry cleaners like RegistryBooster almost force you to take a pre-cleanup backup, so in the worst-case scenario you can simply restore the backup, effectively undoing the repair actions of the registry cleaner.

Another related complaint is that RegistryBooster doesn’t appear in the “Add or Remove Programs” applet. This too can happen with any application. Why? Well…

Bill,
I have the Uniblue program in my computer, my husband thought it was free. We tried to uninstall it several times and it will not. It tells us that the installation is incomplete. We can not get it off of our computer. It comes on at start up. Any ideas on how to remove it?

When I attempted to purchase Uniblue Registry Booster, the site never came up. When I attempted to call them on the number provided 1 866 221 3456, I got a verizon conferencing message. I tried the 952 908 4027 number and I was place on hold for a long time (pretty music though). After five minutes of pretty music, I finally gave up. It makes me wonder if this software is a scam.

Alan, I and many of my clients have been using RegistryBooster for quite some time now, and I can assure you it’s not a scam. It’s an above-average example of its type of product. Of course there is no reason you should take my word for that, but just a little bit of research would reveal that quite a large number of respected reviewers have tested and praised the product.

Your experience in trying to contact Uniblue has been unfortunate to say the least, but not typical. In my experience getting a response from them has never been a problem. However “stuff” does happen, so…

Hilary Rogers from Uniblue has posted her direct e-mail address here in previous messages quite a few times, so I’m sure it will be OK for me to repeat it for you: hilaryr@uniblue.net

i don’t know what all the hype is about, i bought it and like so many other things it appears to be just a hoax. it “cleaned” all the errors it claimed i had, but i still get my .dll warning windows at start up. seems like i’ve been duped again.

Mikal, if you knew how silly and inappropriate that comment is you’d cringe with embarrassment for saying it in public.

If you want help with something RELATING TO REGISTRYBOOSTER then provide some useful details here or, better still, contact Uniblue support via their website.

If you want help sorting out a “DLL problem”, WHICH HAS A 99% PROBABILITY OF HAVING NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR WINDOWS REGISTRY, seek out a forum where such things are discussed. In fact, more often than not such questions can be resolved by carefully considering the keywords that best associate with the problem, then doing a Google search with them.

No single software tool is going to be the right answer for every problem that may beset your PC. You first need to determine exactly what the problem is, then find the right tool for the job — if a tool is even necessary.

I’ve been reading through… what… three pages of comments and replies? I’ve lost count, as I have also been linking, cross linking, google search/researching, and making a general waste of my morning.

*/-aside: I need to quantify that I originally downloaded, ran and thought about full purchase, then realized that I purchased a new laptop not two hours ago and intend on wiping this one when it gets here in the post… sometime in the next couple of days… so yeah, just an exercise in random learning?-

While I have read Bill’s posts with the trepidation of your average truly cynical/pessimistic internet/windows user, I find everything he has said to be very forward and factual. I’ll point out that I actually surfed Bill’s blog for a little while as well.

I was content with reading and preparing to “fav” the blog for later perusal when I came across a little tet-a-tet that ended with this little jewel:

>I think it’s widely accepted that we become less accommodating as we get older. We also care a lot less
>about criticism, but it’s a personal foible of mine that I’m as passionate as ever about seeing that people
>who are interested in learning aren’t fed crap — intentionally or accidentally.

Bravo… seriously! I just had to commend you for that, Bill. I’m tempted to purchase your book, and the Power Suite here just to solidify my stand behind that last bit of honesty and genius. Thank you, Bill, for giving me a lift… I’ll definitely favorite your blog… likely buy your book… and give some of your recommendations a good researching, in the least. Now I just have to remember what service I was going to use for my online bookmarks before I wipe my drive

….and it appears I may have double posted… once with the wrong email address.

I was ready to try this software but after reading the review and comments I’ve decided against it. The performance improvements don’t sound significant and the potential for problems does. In addition I can tell you that I have issues with the software industry squeezing a living out of people by rendering their product obsolete every year or two. Microsoft is the most salient and egregious example of this. I use open source and other freeware. AVG, Zonealrm and Mailwasher to name 3 off the top. They all work beautifully and they have never failed to update, been rendered obsolete, or tried squeeze a cent out of me. I can’t remember the last time I actually paid for software. My impression is that the industry is bent on putting out crappy software so that customer will have to buy the new and improved versions and so on. They are not in the business of providing good value. As to having someone to complain to if you have bought and paid for crappy software – try it.

Again I have to apologize in advance for the length of one of my posts, but it’s too important a topic to allow serious misconceptions to go uncorrected. I think this blog has a limit on the length of comments so I’ll split my response into two parts.

PART ONE

> I was ready to try this software but after reading
> the review and comments I’ve decided against it.

On the one hand you have a number of people whose message comments alone provide a fair indication that they are very inexperienced at best, and in many cases just plain ignorant/stupid/biased. Sorry to have to say it, but that’s the only reasonable conclusion that can be reached considering the content of many messages in this topic. And no, I’m not casting aspersions on everybody who has lodged a complaint.

On the other hand you have a plethora of reviews Written by IT journalists and practitioners. Obviously I haven’t read every review on the product, but I have read quite a few, and I’ve yet to see one that was in any way disparaging. In fact I can’t recall seeing one that wasn’t a glowing recommendation.

While many people may not think highly of the opinion of journalists, those who write in the IT sphere are invariably a few tiers above the average computer user in knowledge and experience, and are often IT professionals or ex-professionals themselves.

So who’s opinion would you prefer to be guided by?

> The performance improvements don’t sound significant

As I’ve attempted to explain here several times, with a registry cleaner performance isn’t the issue. The prime purpose of a registry cleaner is to maintain a clean and stable base for your installation of Windows and of the applications installed within it. That base being the Windows Registry, without which everything falls apart.

The next thing that the skeptic invariably comes up with is something like: “Well Joe Expert says registry cleaners are a waste of time”. In response to that position let me quote from one of my previous contributions to this topic:

1. The efficacy of registry cleaners has been debated ad nauseam for years, and even experts inside and outside of Microsoft can’t agree.

2. Mark Russinovich has been one of the planet’s most respected experts on the Windows architecture for well over a decade. In 2006 Microsoft bought his companies Sysinternals and Winternals so they could get hold of his range of utility products and him, appointing him a Technical Fellow in their Platform and Services Division.

3. Russinovich has publicly supported the use of Registry Cleaners: “So it seems that Registry junk is a Windows fact of life and that Registry cleaners will continue to have a place in the anal-sysadmin’s tool chest, at least until we’re all running .NET applications that store their per-user settings in XML files – and then of course we’ll need XML cleaners”. In my opinion such a claim from someone of Russinovich’s standing outweighs anything to the contrary from some unidentified “respected Microsoft employee”.

4. Although Registry Defragging and Registry Cleaning are slightly different, there is enough of an association to mention that Microsoft still distributes the PageDefrag utility originally developed by Mark Russinovich, thus implicitly giving their blessing to Registry Defragging.

5. Microsoft’s Windows Live OneCare includes a REGISTRY CLEANER to (in their words) “help remove invalid or obsolete registry items on your computer”.

Cleaning up an out-of-shape Registry will often result in performance improvements, which can range from imperceptible to significant. The degree of improvement depends entirely on individual circumstances and there is no way that you can gauge your potential results from those of others. The suggestion of performance improvements, while attractive from a sales perspective, should be regarded as a bonus only.

So long as the registry cleaner software is a quality product, it would be more correct to say that there is a potential for quiescent problems to be bought out into the open. It is extremely unlikely that a quality registry cleaner will *cause* problems. However the user must recognise that, by its very nature, a registry cleaner is an intrusive software tool, and a poorly designed cleaner could cause registry corruption. Of course the elementary precaution of taking a registry backup would allow recovery even in that case.

The nub of that warning is to be guided in your choice of a registry cleaner by knowledgeable people, and give no credence to the rantings of the uninformed.

Also, be careful about confusing “free” and “open source”. Open source software is that for which the source code is published and made publicly available. Many commercial publishers offer a free version of their product, but they certainly don’t publish the source code.

And as I’ve made quite clear in other posts, in my opinion the words “free” and “registry cleaner” don’t belong together. For anything so important I want a proven commercial product backed by a publisher who will be responsible for its performance.

Finally, in the interests of those readers looking for good solutions, I feel compelled to comment on two of your anti-malware choices.

Grisoft is one of my favourite publishers in the anti-malware field and for a long time I did recommend the free version of AVG to my readers and subscribers. However that changed with v8, and I issued an amended recommendation to our members, which reads in part:

“With the recent release of AVG v.8 we no longer view the free version as offering suitable protection. There is a comparison table on the Grisoft website that clearly illustrates there is now too much missing from the free version to make it a viable option. Rootkit detection alone makes the retail version worth every bit of the small cost.”

Zone alarm was another of my recommendations a few years ago, but sadly their developers have followed in the footsteps of so many others and allowed the product to balloon into a bloated monster. Anyone searching for a top-quality software firewall should take a look at Comodo or, my personal favorite, Online Armor from Tall Emu Software.

Bill I think you missed the point of some of the replies on this subject. I would think by now its a well known fact that Windblows is notoriously horrible at keeping the reg.db in a somewhat clean and ordered state, and there is a necessity for 3rd party programs to correct that.

But as you probably know the list of programs that promises to deliver that functionality is extremely long, and most of the products destroys more than they fix. My view on the Uniblue Registry Booster is that the behaviour of the product is not in line with how a product of this type should behave, and when a company decides to make something as simple as an uninstall a messy task, they put themselves in a really poor light.

I personally would never recommend this product to anyone, and I do work in the IT industry.

Hey all, this forum has been a pretty interesting read. It is obvious there are very conflicting opinions about this product.

For the record I found out about Uniblue Registry Booster via http://www.speedtest.net which has a banner proudly stating “Automatically boosts PC performance”. I did not see a reference to a trial version or associated costs.

At least here it states I can download a trial or buy it. There is no indication on how long the trial will be or what the limitations of the trial are. As a matter fact, there is no information about the product beyond the above statement. Am I missing something? Where’s the product description? The details on the product and its capabilities?

Based on the experience so far, I would have closed the browser and gone elsewhere, but the forum has fed my curiosity to find out what all the jazz is about. Against my better judgment, I downloaded RegistryBooster and installed it. Half expecting to see the popup to tell me this is a trail version being installed and functionality is limited, but not overly surprised when it didn’t.

Launching the application after install immediately launched the scan (I didn’t like that!). I cancelled and it had already found some “errors” (I notice the “unregistered” highlight, but can only guess its meaning). Clicking repair says only 15 can be repaired, unless I buy the full version.

Now I can identify some of the haters of this software:
1) No info on the product (even on the official site)
2) No warning of the limitations until after installation, scan, and request to clean.
3) Immediately running the process upon launch, without warning or notice.
4) Only requesting purchase for software after setting me up to think it was going to help me.

If I had not read the forum before-hand, I’d probably go around telling people not to download this software at the risk of it being spyware/malware. However, I am confident from what I’ve read that it is not.

Based on the handlig of Uniblue to push it’s software without information or proper warning, disclaimer, etc. has caused me to lose confidense in the software as a whole. Despite Bill Hely’s and other people’s testimony and strong stand behind the software, i’m not convinced that this software will be very likeable if Uniblue continue to market in this way.

I would like to report a rather dramatic increase in performance on cold boot. I no longer have time to make a cup of tea. The only thing that seems to have “gone wrong” was the internet home page was turned to a blank page but I do not know what caused that to happen.

But is does beg the question “why does windows need third party program to keep running?”. For a number of years I have always installed the operating system in it’s own partition and kept all down loads and new stuff in another so the mess that was being created was being done by windows alone. This helps a little and makes defragging the operating system a simple task. But is does confirm there are some fundamental “internal management” deficiencies in windows. And before you ask I started with DOS 3, numerous versions of windows and now XP.

Unlike the various “informed” commentors above, I represent the user who just wants to get stuff done and probably represent the average user who’s been scarred into buying various products to keep me, my finances and my computer “safe” from various outside nare-do-wells who want to rip me and my bank accounts off. In this process, I now find myself spending more and more time performing system maintenance and checking out articles such as these, when there’s so much better things to do with the time. Considering the enormous vested interests of the IT and software industries, it’s no wonder that there’s always another “problem” to fix. The whole IT industry is stupid. It’s similar to the UK motor bike industry in the sixties / seventies when you had to know how to set the points, replace cylinder head gaskets and be able to trace headlamp electrical faults on your Norton or Triumph. And then came along the Japanese with their “press to start and ride for thrills until done” approach. The rest is history. Geeks can stick to geekiness. My guess is that “computers” are becoming more and more daunting to currently non-users, fuelled by scare stories…………exacerbated exponentially now by cybercrime etc. This is potentially stunting sales and growth. For the aforementioned “stupid”, read manipulative. The dominance of Microsoft may now mean that a normal users “white Knight” may never come along to provide the nirvana of “press and go” and in the mean-time I actually invite nare-do-wells (generically) into my computer by buying their software as an almost complete act of faith; and even if I can return to previous settings I’ve donated US$ 30 (on average) to someones Ferrari fund. I like Glenn’s comment (29 May), “that the behaviour of the product is not in line with how a product of this type should behave”. No matter how “geeky” brilliant the product is, it deserves to struggle if it fails to initially instill confidence from the outset with users such as myself and, what-ever business model the IT industry chooses to pursue, companies cannot hope to maintain sustainability if their products don’t satisfy customers expectations. Back to the drawing board for Uniblue’s marketing Dept?

After reading the post I have to say the only person that sounded reasonable was Daniel. The only thing Bill Hely did for me was prove that he wasn’t a very nice person by telling people they sound silly, that they are inappropriate and they are ignorant/stupid/biased. I don’t consider my self ignorant/stupid/or biased but I was still offended by the statement and concidered it immature. It seem to me that if you didn’t rave about the product you got put down by Bill and JasonP. Everybody has there opinion no need to call them ignorant and such because they don’t agree with you. Even if they put you down it is better to ignore most of it than stoop to there level. It’s called being professional and it is necessary if you want to sell a product. At any rate I am totally turned off by the whole commentary section so I will go else where for the very same type of product. God know there are tons out there that are just as good and don’t have a whole page full of petty bickering

100% agree with Daniel and Lynda. In debate theory, most of what Jason and Bill stated in their rebutalls make absolutely no logical sense (hence, IMO, fallacious). They strike me as prideful and arrogant (yes, this sounds like a personal attack which is the “ad hominem attack fallacy” but those statements are merely an expression of an opinion. Examples: Jason and Bill completely miss the point that not clearly stating that whatever the trial version finds will not be fixed is flat out deception. It’s legal, but it’s deception nevertheless. And it’s an indefensible business practice. And for Jason and Bill to not acknowledge that is sad indeed. Instead, they use the straw man fallacy to change the topic to Windows not being free (which properly got rebutted that many of their key products are fully functional for 30 to 60 days (Office, etc.). And the second straw man was about open source — it too is fully functional and absolutely free.

Another weak point is to mention Russinovich and his supporting Registry cleaners *without* giving a citation. Not good and don’t tell me I can Google it. In a debate, the judges will take points away and tell you “no sopup for you!”. nd by the way, many of us here could write the same tools Russinovich wrote if we immersed ourselves in the user and kernel APIs, learned to writeand debug drivers, etc., etc. Mark is no brighter no better than most of us. What I would say about him proudly is that he took the risk of carving out a chunk of his life to do what at first was poorly paid-for work (in my opinion) but soon developed a snowballing reputation by admins and other bright technical folks who sorely needed (and understood) the value of his tools and were thankful he and Bryce took the time to write them. And now they deservedly reap the rewards for their effort. But all of that does not mean they support registry cleaners. What it means is that they support a registry cleaner(if that statement is indeed true) that is well designed and marketed properly. And there are none out there. Period, plain and simple. It’s always the lesser of many evils when it comes to such a tool. Which one has the least worst phone support, which one is the least intrusive, which one is the least likely to throw eggs in it’s own face in areas such as uninstalls, etc., etc. The only registry manipulation I trust is that which removes certifiably known entries corresponding to viruses. That’s what some anti-virus/malware products do and that is very convenient (vs. manually doing them or copying and pasting what the threat report says into a registry-update-script).

BTW, I installed this product, was hugely disappointed when it wouldn’t fix everything like I tjhought it would, and did indeed immediately uninstall it without a problem. I was very angry about assuming the trial version would allow removal immediately. I wholheartedly **DO NOT** recommend for the above and several other undisclosed reasons I will be glad to post if requested by three or more people.

One more comment. I found this blog most interesting. It grabbed my attention when Mr. Passey showed the tables of comparision for Before and After cleaner — and so if i do nothing but Restart my computer and go into Add/Remove programs I will reduce the startup time and restart times from 46 and 63 to 43 and 58 seconds. This is a 6.5% and 7.9% speedup. And yet Mr. Passey said:

As you can see, both start up and restart times were reduced *****significantly*****

The asterisks are mine. This is known as the fallacy of hyperbole (or exaggeration). I have now gone to the trouble to show the audience ****millions**** of examples and by the this time you get my point :-).

Anyway, along the chuckling side of things, my reaction to this use of the word “significantly” was akin to Jim Mora’s classical “playoffs? playoffs?” reaction to reporters after an embarrassing comeback defeat against his Indianapolis Colts when he was there head coach… “Significantly? Significantly?…”

My point is this: what the heck kind of a boost is all that? And how about the notion that I spend 10 hours = 600 minutes on my computer *AFTER* I restart it and gain that 5 second improvement in the first of those 600 minutes? Mr. Passey, what will registry booster do for me in the next 599 minutes? I appreciate your being ecstatic over such a “tiny” (your words) improvement but it doesn’t do much for me — you need to measure it during the course of a day by coming up with a well designed benchmark that simulates a variety of applications. Defrag s/w is a different story and I won’t argue there but it would be foolish for anyone to buy anything other than the best and trust me, it’s not Uniblue (IMO).

“Update from David Risley on 12/7/07
This review was written in 2006…”

Registry Booster 2009 … reviewed in 2006!

Enough said! When is the review for Registry Booster 2012 due to be published? Oh it’s being reviewed by the editor for release next week, alongside it’s release!

I had to delete my long post due to reading Harry’s….

I agree to a certian extent with some of the comments… from all posters. This is trapware… they trick you into downloading and installing, then tell you it’s only a trial, or to actually work you have to buy. A plan to get a bill to stop companies like this keep being held up or constantly killed. Lobbiest and currupt politicians are making a profit as are these companies…

Call you local represenative and ask them what are they doing to protect you from these companies!

The Above article will help those who are undecided and wonder if they need it or not.

Those who think they need it… I use CCleaner (Free to use, try, update) And they do not harrass you to donate, warning Yahoo toolbar is pre-checked comes as part of the CCleaner toolbar… just uncheck it if you do not want it. Allows you to do much more then fix the registry, will even remove stubburn add/remove programs from registry. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ccleaner

I think this program is very dodgy, it shows up a lot of fake errors to scare people into buying it. Look at some of the entries, and also run a free reg cleaner and see if it impacts the results. You will see a lot of fake results left in, some are obviously fake and if you do a random spot check of your registry you will not find them. Do not buy, this is a classic scam, probably not malware, but waste of your money.

Do not trust this software. It gives you fake results to scare you into buying the software which does next to nothing. It is a very common scam ‘trapware’ as one previous poster put it defines it precisely. Do not fall for it, either buy a very good reg cleaner or use a free one like RegSeeker.

DO NOT download this software! You can’t X out of it and everyone I click it pops up an error that says “Can’t read independent file”. This gets on my nerves but what’s worse is that I can’t uninstall it. I tried using the Uninstall Software in Microsoft XP Control Panel but Uniblue does not show up. I also installed RevoUninstaller to take care of this crap but the spamware does not show up either! Wow… what a piece of *^&@#!!

First of all, ignore any condescending replies here telling you that you need to read or understand X, Y, or Z regarding uninstallation or computers or anything like that. I had this same problem, except it just appeared out of nowhere and my parents needed help removing it, but just like you said, it didn’t appear in add/remove. What you need to do is contact Uniblue and request a link to the latest version. Download and install that, this will overwrite whatever version you have, and add an entry so you can uninstall it. That’s how I got rid of the thing.

Warning gullible computer users! Garbage software like Uniblue Registry “Booster” will only nag you into purchasing their software! The makers of this program are scam artists who are relying on scare tactics to push a product that is FREELY available in several other forms.

That’s not really enough info to be able to give you much help. Losing wireless connectivity isn’t a normal consequence of using a registry cleaner, unless you already had some instability.

What I’d probably do is remove the adapter if it’s USB or CardBus and configure the computer back to a pre-wireless state. Then I’d go to work getting the computer cleaned up and stable. This would also be a good time to uninstall any software you don’t need, reboot, defrag, reboot, then run RegistryBooster again, before reinstalling wireless capability from scratch.

Have you installed all the service packs for your Windows version? Is it up to date with all Microsoft patches? Of course you will need a connection to the Internet for both of those steps.

I know that’s a bit brief but you should get the general idea. I don’t think this is really a RegistryBooster problem so the best source of support is probably your wireless adapter manufacturer.

Booster caused SVChost.exe with 0x7c91b21a referenced memory at 0x00000010.
Try as you may, could not resolve the problem
No plug and playb devices worked and the wireless network gave errors
Restored the back-up after fighting the problems for a long time
Un installed booster and I had my trusty slow, but stable laptop back
Was it worth it? I think not

I have both uniblue speed up my pc 2009 and the registry cleaner installed on my laptop and since installing them I have noticed a great improvement, Many thanks uniblue..
I am currently running windows 7 rc and it has no problems with this fine software whatsoever. I have recommended both these products on various forums that I frequent and from the replies that I have had back from those that have installed and run this software there are no qualms about it whatsoever, most of those that replied to me personally have said that their system was now quicker than it has ever been. With so many malware registry/system cleaners out on the market why take the risk of adding to your problems when this software does exactly what it says on the tin ? Highly recommended..

ermmm… i would love to know how many of you with problems actually contacted Uniblue support. I admit I was worried when I had some issues initially but their tech support ppl were great… helpful and prompt… not something I can say of many other companies I bought software from.

This does not appear to be a reliable company. I purchased, Registry Booster 2010. They charged by VISA account in seconds. The product key was not accepted by the UniBlue product so it is not functional. They have NO support for customers. Beware. They can take your money but you may get noting in return. They are based in Malta and their US partner sellers are less than useless. They refer you to a website out in the ether.

Well this has been a very interesting read. I must say though that although when I came across the info for Registry Cleaner I was somewhat skeptical. However I did go ahead and install the full product along with Speed up my PC. I consider myself an above average user often times running Photoshop and a movie/slide show editor at the same time which slows down my system. I have windows Xp and my system is about 5 years old. When I ran the Cleaner it found 1252 errors – about normal I guess. I cleaned them up. The Speed test found a bunch more problems and I cleaned them up. I will say that my system now runs much faster and seems alot more stable. Start up times has decreased as well. Most of all – I can now run both Photoshop and my show editor at the same time which I could not do before with no problems. It seems – for me – that UniBlue’s product works.

It xould be a great software tool, however, I hate it when I download a “free” program which then finds some 500 problems on my computer and then tells me I can fix only 15 of them or purchase the product in order to fix them all. I feel cheated.

Yeah know, the thing is. You can go to MS’s website. And get the registry cleaner as an online tool. Whom better to clean the registry than the people who made i so F*&$#@$ up in the first place?
As I’ve said before; I don’t go with any program that always tells you how good it’s keeping your computer working. As in life, the best workers, programs, etc, etc, etc, usually do the best work in the background. Bells, and whistles do nothing for me.
I keep my computer clean through proper procedure.
Using all the tools that Ms provides, you can maintain your computer.

P.S. XP was a great system in theory. But MS allowed so much in the way of viruses. I can’t wait for October 22nd. Then I get the new OS. Windows 7. I’ve tried it. It rocks the doors off from the rest.

I downloaded Uniblue and it told me if I wanted to go to the backup to retrieve what was eliminated I could. After the scan my Yahoo IM no longer worked and my Norton 360 was disabled. After not being able to find where they put the backup I eliminated it. I had to reinstall the Yahoo IM and am having difficulty reinstituting my Norton 360 because they can’t find it on my computer for updating. After only two tears of using a computerI am not happy with the free scans from anybody.

The free d/l found several hundred problem, had to buy the program to “fix” but the fix 1) does not follow typical program protocols of operations, 2)did not fix anything that I could see, 3) took my operating speed from moderate to down right slow, 4)auto starts on reboot without a cancel button and 5) wants you to spend twice as much for the “additional fixes”. My feeling…STEER CLEAR.

I downloaded the free Uniblue Registry Booster scan to help improve my videos and pictures and can’t seem to get rid of it. In fact it downloaded twice. It made downloading pictures and video to a new CD impossible. I’m screwed. I’m afraid to pay for the program for fear it will mess something else up. Help…..

This is what I sent to this blog. It is still under review by the administrator. The program referenced below took care of my problem. If your problem was as bad as mine it may be worth you trying it to. It worked miracles for me “My Uninstaller 2008″ free 21 day trial. Of course, I cannot guarantee that you get the same results. Just letting everyone know what worked for me.

Message sent to blog for review:
If you need to get in touch with Uniblue…you will not be able to. You’ll get some email from someone named Hilary (whoever that is) telling you to contact support. Good Luck with that! I have found the best anti-virus program to be AVG free or Avast free. The paid version loads down the machine and asks whether you want Google, etc each and every time that you boot up whether you want those entities to access your machine…ANNOYING. Malwarebytes is the very best program to catch just about anything and you can get it in a free version. In my opinion it is awsome. The real reason for this post is that I tried to uninstall Uniblue (paid version). I had purchased the works. The trouble is that it would not only not let me uninstall it, I would go to the search bar, type in uniblue and try to delet manually (woulf not let me on some of the items). I tried to go through the registry with no luck removing it. Could not get rid of it on the add/remove list. However, I found the best program that really can help with these programs that keep regenerating themselves like viruses. The name is Your Uninstaller 2008. It has a free 21 day download, went to pro and it removed all componets of Uniblue from my computer. When I reboot, it does not regerate itself! FABULOUS!!

Does anyone know why Uniblue would want to design a program that cannot be uninstalled and keeps regenerating after you have deleted all that you can manually? What is the purpose?

I hear you buddy. This piece of shit software won’t let me uninstall it either. There is no uninstall feature. Windows Add/Remove program doesn’t show it for me to uninstall it. I even tried to uninstall it with Revo Uninstaller but couldn’t do it either. It is hiding and preventing us from uninstalling it.

People, open your eyes. There is no need for this tool. You can use a free registry cleaner tool from ccleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/) which is reviewed very well. You can also use a Microsoft tool. AND – its just basic housekeeping you are doing here. Please dont think its going to make your computer run faster. And at the very least, dont admit it online! Anybody who takes out his credit card to PAY for a registry booster is a well… Anyway, good luck!

If you need to get in touch with Uniblue…you will not be able to. You’ll get some email from someone named Hilary (whoever that is) telling you to contact support. Good Luck with that! I have found the best anti-virus program to be AVG free or Avast free. The paid version loads down the machine and asks whether you want Google, etc each and every time that you boot up whether you want those entities to access your machine…ANNOYING. Malwarebytes is the very best program to catch just about anything and you can get it in a free version. In my opinion it is awsome. The real reason for this post is that I tried to uninstall Uniblue (paid version). I had purchased the works. The trouble is that it would not only not let me uninstall it, I would go to the search bar, type in uniblue and try to delet manually (woulf not let me on some of the items). I tried to go through the registry with no luck removing it. Could not get rid of it on the add/remove list. However, I found the best program that really can help with these programs that keep regenerating themselves like viruses. The name is Your Uninstaller 2008. It has a free 21 day download, went to pro and it removed all componets of Uniblue from my computer. When I reboot, it does not regerate itself! FABULOUS!!

Does anyone know why Uniblue would want to design a program that cannot be uninstalled and keeps regenerating after you have deleted all that you can manually? What is the purpose?

HOW DO WE UNINSTALL IT ? This piece of shit software won’t let me uninstall it. There is no uninstall feature. Windows Add/Remove program doesn’t show it for me to uninstall it. I even tried to uninstall it with Revo Uninstaller but couldn’t do it either. It is hiding and preventing users from uninstalling it.

The basics: I had a struggling computer and a Microsoft sponsored link to this product. It represented the scan as “free”, NOT. I needed my computer so I bought the software, fixed the 615 registry errors it found and my computer never booted again.

I paid Dell to fix it, $300, they resotred it to the factory image and I lost every piece of software, every file, every bookmark, every picture, everything.

I wrote Uniblue and asked for my money back, no response and it’s two weeks and counting. tHIS SOFTWARE IS GARBAGE AND YOU’LL BE SORRY YOU BOUGHT IT.

I have read these comments with interest.
I have been running Uniblue sump and rb for over a year on my fairly fast XP machine and can honestly say that I have had no problems and believe that they have done a good job keeping windows clean.
XTrail Mike

Do yourself a favor… and avoid putting this lousy software on your computer. It ruined my computer and they have lousy customer support. (Their customer support is writing you an email back a day later.) I had to take my computer to be repaired and even the repair center told me this software did a number on my computer. Take my advice and do not put this on your machine. You’re better off doing a disk cleanup and then defragging your computer or taking it to a reliable repair center in your area if you want to speed up your computer’s performance. I would avoid putting this on your computer and giving them your CC #. I’ve already contacted my credit card company to make sure they don’t pay them for crappy software that caused me headaches and additional repairs.

I have purchased and paid for Uniblue Register US$29.95 and I am very dissatisfied because whenever I use it, it prompts me to buy once again, without any of the promised action.
I would like to have my money returned as promised when I bought it, but I cannot find any address to mail or call to express my complaints.
Such business behaviour appears to me as not quite honest

I Bought Uniblue Speed Up My PC on 6/4/2009. It did nothing useful at all. I Requested a refund the day I bought it. There is allegedly a 30 money-back guarantee. I RECEIVED NO RESPONSE TO MANY REQUESTS FOR A REFUND over the next few months. This company is obviously not actually certified by Microsoft, as they claim to be. My order number for the purchase is: 6101760.

Since the company is listed as a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, have you or anyone else tried to contact Microsoft? MS is very particular about their GCP and may be able to help you out with refunds, or at the least, get Uniblue’s support to contact you.

I’ve notified MS in the past of problems with one of their Certified Partners. They were able to the issue rectified very quickly.

Since the company is listed as a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, have you or anyone else tried to contact Microsoft? MS is very particular about their GCP and may be able to help you out with refunds, or at the least, get Uniblue’s support to contact you.

I’ve notified MS in the past of problems with one of their Certified Partners. They were able to the issue rectified very quickly.

I hate to re-state the obvious but most of us not-quite-tech users need check blogs and ratings of these companies before we try the free products.

A Kim Komando review did NOT like this product at all [and Liutilities and Paretologic] and the WOT ratings for both these sites has them to be ‘untrustworthy.’

Why do companies have programs that are difficult or almost impossible to uninstall? Usually the money, maybe advertising or maybe there’s a tracking program or rootkit in there just waiting for later. General advice – research freeware before installation, especially from China, India, and Russia.

First, thank you for this forum.
I have searched and found 24 iedw files on my computer. They are various versions installed in Windows and either NT uninstall or a series of numbers and symbols, but all registered by MS. There is a PF file. And something I don’t recognize: C\Win\software distribution\download\e9500….. There is one in C

There is one in C\windows\ie7 and another in C\Program files\Internet Explorer. Finally, an .MUI file in \Program files\Internet Explorer.
I have had a problem with the computer freezing – being busy cranking away at something in the background. After an annoying period of time (up to a half hour) I pull out the DSL modem connection and manually turn off the running machine.
I use CC cleaner very frequently while online, use the registry cleaner occasionally (although cleaning the registry is not recommended by MS), and defrag periodically.
Any idea why the iedw.exe error?
I am suspicious of the “software distribution dowload” and the one in \windows\ie7.
Any suggestions?

What started as clearly an ad for Uniblue is clearly getting trashed by users/buyers. My own experience has always been that any program that offers free DL, Then requires you to buy to repair what it “Finds” is a scam. I got sucked into this malware by being overmedicated and paid dearly. The Stats shown above show little or no speed improvement, and worst of all, my AV programs constantly blocked this program’s attempt to communicate with known or suspected malicious sites.
Rules
1. Never buy a program without researching it.
2. Never buy a program that offers Free DL then purchase to fix what it allegedly finds.
3. Read #1 Again

Fortunately, not only did it uninstall cleanly, but the company that now handles their billing (Cleverbridge,Inc) refunded my money with a minimum of bother, not only for this piece of cra# but an equally unusable program, Adaware Pro. Adaware Free version was a nice tight program that I used for many years. Sadly, the Pro version is overbloated and scan times were commonly running 18 plus hours. I had to delete it just to run more useful programs such as PCSafe

Thanks for those interesting comments above! I also ran into this program by clicking on some link. I had a feeling this could be something bad, but however I installed the free scan utility and the program found over 300 errors. To fix these errors you needed to “register”. I clicked on the register-link and then they told me I had to write down my personal data and credit card number. They also tried to make be beleive the price was on a bargain today by setting a high faked price first and then the discount (which is the real price). If you read the small text at the bottom of the page you will also see that the include a “service” that automatically charges your credit card with an un-known fee on a yearly subscription basis. They also tell you that this could be cancelled, but only if you open the register-mail to your mail account and click on a certain link there…..suspicios!

I am surprised this article above decided to have these comments not hidden….

I have been suckered into downloading, installing, and running programs like this before. Fortunately for me, as soon I figured out registering or licensing the software to fix errors meant “here is what is wrong, now pay for us to perform our fix” (by all means, every body should paid fairly for good services), I instead opted to Google for reputable free system tweakers and never experienced anything like the horror stories posted above.

For example, a very good, 100% free FOREVER, realtime scan and protection antivirus: AVAST
Free download, free installation, free scans, free fixes for two months. Then free annual registration for free annual license. I didn’t even Google for this one. A friend burned me a copy of it and they know less about computers than I do.
Would you like a FREE registry cleaner/defragmenter? RegSeeker by HoverDesk. The only problem I ever had with it was trying to start NTI’s CD Maker after registry cleaning. I told them about it and they fixed it in their next update. This was several years ago, In my honest opinion, NTI is crappy software anyway and unheard of today. Otherwise, I have never had a problem with RegSeeker on XP and Vista. I haven’t tested it on Windows 7 yet.
How about a FREE junk file remover: DustBuster
It has removed up to 2GB on XP and Vista for me and It has never removed any important files.
And last but not least, a good spyware/malware remover: SpyBot Search and Destroy
This program is not fully automatic like Windblows Pretender, I mean Windows Defender.
O, I just thought of a good firewall: ZoneAlarm
ZoneAlarm I haven’t used in a while. Since XP Service Pack 3, Windows Firewall does an OK job.

There are no “free” All-In-One system/internet security/maintainance programs that I know of, but you can search for a free program for every individual tweak out there. Or you can pay for an all-in-one that will save you the headaches of brewing your own coctail of programs plus full automation, ease-of-use, tech support, etc. such as Kaspersky Internet Security, System Mechanic, Advanced System Optimizer… I think these guys have limited featured free trials. I recommend steering clear of Norton/Symantec and McAfee.

Google is my best friend and has been my home page for several years because I find it an invaluable resource for researching EVERYTHING. I’d say about 90% of computer problems I’ve fixed was from information I obtained looking for it through Google.

I can only conclude that uniblue Registry booster is fraudulent, a lousy scam. I have purchased two times, downloaded two times, installed, uninstalled, reinstalled six times, yet despite multiple requests for assistance, I am still unable to activate the product.

This appears to be and will be reported as Internet fraud.
Gordon J. Shannon M. D.

I order your cleaning porgram on December 1,2009, and will honestly say that you are a bunch of crooks. I really did not have away to contact you until now. I keep tryng to enter my registry, but it has been to no avial. They asking for register number, but all I have is the order number, [8609238]. If you cannot honor the purchase tjhat I made, send me my money bank. I will leave with these words if do not honor your contract, then I will take you to court. I do not know your address or phonenumber, but iI could easily find out. A disgruntle customer.

I am disgruntle customer, the rason being that I ordered your registry cleaning program on December 1,2009 and have not receive any completion of your program. If you don t intend to honor your conatract, sned my money back.

ok lol. To Gordon J. Shannon M. D., why in the sam hell on Gods green earth would you buy this software twice in the fist place, then install and uninstall 6 times? I wouldn’t let these people pay me to run this crap on my computers. I mean really??

To, Jose Miranda, the guy that wrote this review has nothing to do with the company you feel scammed you. (unless he got paid by the company to write a great review of their product, which is quite possible).

To the rest of you, why the hell do you waist your money on crap like this with out doing a little research first? I don’t care how many “Microsoft gold certified partner” stickers they have on their page. If you had done the research you would have found horror stories, you would have found out there really isn’t any real data from anyone that’s reputable proving or disproving that software like this can stop crashes, or improve system performance. You people see your computers slowing down from stupid things you do and install and then you buy this junk thinking its going to fix it. I got news for you, it wont. I dont trust any registry cleaners, i dont trust any company that makes registry cleaners, and i really don’t trust anyone who gives any registry cleaner a 9.5 our of 10 rating. (Sorry Ryan, but i dowbt your any kind of real tech thats been in the feild for 20 years seeing first hand how crap software like this effects real computers in the real world. If you had any actual knowledge about this entire genre of software, you wouldn’t be writing raving reviews about it.)

And to the few people who claimed they bought this product, with or with out other software packages like “Speed up my PC” (which by the way is targeted towards really stupid people also), im sorry but your delusional if you believe that either one of those products drastically speed up your system. And if it did, your the luckiest people on the planet, because my hundreds of clients and customers over the years that had their computers screwed up by THIS product and others like it would laugh at your assessment.

I fix computers that are crippled and severely screwed up by software like this. And story is ALWAYS the same, computer novice people suckered by these companies who make ridiculous claims. My advice to all of you is, get a good anti virus / firewall/ anti malware software package, and when your computer slows down, take it to a local computer tech to have it cleaned up safely, which most of the time will make your computer run about like it did right out of the box.

Seriously people, google “Uniblue complaints” or “registry cleaner complaints” and spend about a year reading them. I research every company im considering doing business with, and if i see even a fraction of complaints about a company, avoid it like the swine flu.

Uniblue, I think you are no difference from a snake oil salesman. I was taken by the “Microsoft Certificate Partner” claim and paid for my mistake. Your software has not improved the performance of my computer, but delay its start up as it force me to wait for the “scanning” every time I started my computer, and I cannot cancel or stop the scanning. I want my money back!

I read the review and decided to try the RegistryBooster. I was not satisfied. I requested a refund repeatedly and have still not had a response a month later. UniBlue is a ripoff as far as I’m conserned.

I don’t know about the software, but are any of you posting literate. I have not seen so many spelling and grammatical errors since second grade. If you are all so intelligent that you can evaluate software then make it believable by showing that you at least have a passable understanding of the English language. Ignorance is not bliss, it is revealing as to the level of intelligence displayed by an individual.
LOL
Dread

Downloaded and installed Uniblue Registry Booster as a free software however after the scan a purchase was required in order to fix the supposed problems it found. Free is free!!!Regardless whether there is a limited time for it’s use or a only one time use, so it is my assessment Uniblue engages in unethical sales practices that in turn makes me believe the software can’t do what it is advertised to do and i will never purchase any software from this company or any company that is associated with Uniblue.

I had to spend much time paying through paypal so that I could help sort out a friend’s laptop. Two days later no sign of a key to register. And thee friend has moved on. So even when uniblue get round to sending a key it will be useless to me. I use a Mac….Reading through the other complaints I realise that this shoddy experience is common….

I’m really confused by all the negative comments. My key allowed me to activate Uniblue on all three of my computers. The oldest and most neglected of the three had the most errors, and I honestly can say they all run faster after using the cleaner. I even studied the error log and registry, and all of the errors were legitimate. I have since uninstalled Uniblue from one of the computers just to see if I could and it uninstalled just fine. I’m running XP on a Toshiba Laptop, and two Dell Desktops. And the testimonials online are about the same mix of happy customers sprinkled with horror stories that I have not experienced. So sorry to all of you who can’t figure out how to use it properly. Better luck in the future…

Well, guys, I’m a 70+ grandma who was stupid enough to download Uniblue Registry Booster. So far, can’t uninstall it despite following several suggestions. So mega-bucks computer guy must come and help. Why do folks like this exist and why are idiots like me duped?

and MS certified Tech you are bitter and twisted to think that us poor folk are so dumb… after all we are all interconnected.. Probably stuff you are not so smart about or indeed delusional, and if so I hope you don’t get ranted at!

oh by the way CCleaner does a good job, has a great reputation, is safe and tends not to mess up your system, can be removed easily if you are unsatisfied… doesn’t have loads of bells and whistles, but enough to do the job……………….. and is freeware to boot so costs you nothing unless you want to donate… go check it out

as to Registrybooster, I had a look at what it found and frankly most of it looks innocuous, so not really worth cleaning and cracking out the cash for. Can’t comment on thier customer service though as did not buy it. Took it off my PC with no problem so its not malware and none of my scanner show that it is. So I suspect that if you are struggling to remove it that something more is amiss than this piece of software can handle.

well i downloaded it started free scan and when it got to 3/10 percent i already had 110 errors… i didn’t let it get to four i would not trust this program guys sounds and looks like more malware to me and should be filed for internet fraud

I WAS ABOUT TO TRY UNIBLUE,BUT I ALREADY SPENT MONEY IN TWO OTHERS WHO COULD NOT FIX THE PROBLEM.WELL, I KNOW THEY SHOULD HAVE ENOUGH KNOWLEDGE TO BASIC CLEANNINGS. THAT’S WHAT THE OTHER TWO DID WHICH LOGICALLY SPEED UP THE SYSTEM.BUT THE GREATEST ERROR WASN’T FIX (WHICH IS :THE START OVERVIEW MENU STOP WORKING.THE TASK BAR IS THERE,BUT WHEN YOU PRESS IT,NO RESPONSE.ONLY THE CLASSIC MODE STILL WORK) IF YOU HAD THE SAME EXPERIENCE AND KNOW WHAT TO DO ,AND BY THE WAY IF ALSO UNIBLUE CAN FIX THAT EMAIL ME: marc_11@netzero.com

This is a SCAM. I spent money and it keeps asking me to buy yet again. It does not run, it does not work and is a fruadulent enterprise at best. No support to even ask for help! I should have known better – glad I used PayPal.

Chris, this is NOT a scam. I bought it, and, upon clicking the ‘repair’ option, it told me to buy the full version too. At first shocked, thinking the same thing you did, I soon realised what had went wrong – I never added in the serial key. It DOES NOT prompt you to do so – you have to click on the ‘register’ button yourself, and copy your serial key into there. As soon as you have hit ‘authorise’, the program will run just as advertised.

I just uninstalled it remotely on a buddy’s computer. Upon reboot a startup manager caught it reinstalling itself automatically from the cache of Opera browser. Any program that installs itself or reinstalls itself without even asking permission from the cache or temporary directory from a browser smells like malware to me. Hope it works for some, but I directed my friend to other products because of this reason and this reason alone.
I don’t trust software like this.

I just purchased this program. I also have registry mechanic. When I clicked on this program, a window came up saying Only one instance can be running
What does that mean? Is it because I already have another cleaner? I closed registry mechanic but it doesn’t make any difference.

Uniblue is a complete scam. I am in the process of removing it from a friends laptop and it stops every attempt to open task manager, registry, everything. I am having to go into safe mode and manually delete the registry keys. I haven’t seen anything as malicious as this.
Here’s a link that shows which registry keys need removing.

Tried Uniblue RegistryBooster. It found 346 errors. Trial version only “fixes” 15, requires you to register to get more. I found a free registry cleaner (Eusing Free Registry Cleaner) which found and fixed over a thousand problems with my registry. Then I ran Uniblue again, and it found 346 errors. That just seems fishy to me. In the review here, I did not see anything I would consider to be a dramatic improvement, so I’m definitely not buying this. I uninstalled, and removed all traces I could find of the program in my registry.

I, too, have fallen into the trap – because it was advertised on NoScript I thought I could ‘trust’ them.

Did the free Scan, and then stumbled into a classic Bait & Switch, I investigated the Register Now feature to find out what it would cost. On learning that I shut down for the night to consider it.

Next morning: It’s Insidious, Intrusive, Invasive and has completely taken over my machine. The only way I got here was by sneaking in through a back door. Can’t delete, uninstall or do anything else – I don’t care what the Reviewer above says, this is a travesty.

MCSLondon technicians are taught on all software available, UniBlue is something that comes up very often!

This ‘software’ and many other Registry Scanners (or optimisers or whatever they want to call themselves) are a complete scam.

At best, they slow down your system by secretly and silently using it as a spam mailer or some other nasty reason.
At worst they can trash your machine completely.

UniBlue use their profits effectively at least, they buy up websites and staff to leave positive reviews for their product, some of these like the one above are very convincing especially with the little update acknowledging its bad reviews!
They need the right amount of people that keeps the money coming in but isnt enough to get them in the public eye and investigated.

If you are the type of person that believes registries need optimising, unfortunately you will always be caught out by one company or another.

If you understand that there is no such thing as a one click fix for computer errors and instead you need help from a technician then you will benefit in the long run. PC errors are exactly that, ERRORS, and need FIXING. What went wrong needs reversing, not a piece of software installed. To find out what went wrong and reverse it you need the knowledg